This seminar attempts to do several things at once: we will develop a visual astuteness by which we can talk about pictures, and we will further our awareness of photographers who address issues of landscape; we explore contemporary dialogues regarding land, culture and ethics, and we develop our own photographic competence.

Readings, Photographic Responses, One Response Paper, One Report on Contemporary Landscape Photographer, Final Photographic Project.

Marion Belanger photographs the cultural landscape, particularly where geology and the built environment intersect.  In 2002 she was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship to photograph the contested landscape of the Everglades.  Rather than focusing only on the wetlands in the protected National Park, she also ventured into the drained and developed land of the historic Everglades region. In Spring 2016 Radius Books will release her book Rift & Fault, a study of the two land-based edges of the North American Continental Plate. Lucy Lippard has written the essay for the book.  Belanger earned a M.F.A. from the Yale University School of Art where she was the recipient of both the John Ferguson Weir Award and the Schickle-Collingwood Prize, and a B.F.A. from the College of Art & Design at Alfred University. She has been an artist in residence at the MacDowell Colony, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Arts, Everglades National Park, and MASS MoCA.  Her work is shown internationally, and is in many museum collections including the National Gallery for Art and The International Center for Photography.  A substantial archive of her work is housed at the Yale University Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. faculty bio for Marion Belanger