HARTFORD, CT.- Shifting Terrain: Contemporary Landscape Photography, an exhibition featuring the work of seventeen notable artists, including Edward Burtynsky, Olafur Eliasson, Andy Goldsworthy, Rosemary Laing, David Maisel, Sally Mann, Simon Norfolk, John Pfahl, and Hiroshi Sugimoto, will be presented by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, July 15 - November 5, 2006.

Drawn from Wadsworth Atheneum's permanent collection and several private collections, some of the photographs recall nineteenth-century landscape traditions while others chart new thematic and geographic territory.

According to Joanna Marsh, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, "Facing mankind's alteration of pristine spaces into sites of mass deforestation and toxic waste dumps, many contemporary artists have endeavored to resurrect the notion of natural beauty, and once again imbue landscape photography with a sense of the sublime."

The awe-inspiring scenery captured in large albumen prints by nineteenth-century photographers Carleton E. Watkins and William Henry Jackson is echoed in serene and subtly toned gelatin silver prints of Rena Bass Forman. American landscape painting traditions of the picturesque and of invented compositions are evoked in Rosemary Laing's groundspeed series, where a giant carpet has been applied to a forest floor. In contrast, Edward Burtynsky is concerned with environmental devastation caused by industrial waste, such as his 2000 series documenting shipbreaking in Chittagong, Bangladesh; Simon Norfolk has focused his lens on sites scarred by human atrocities, such as Bosnia's minefields and mass graves. Looking at the landscape from a different angle, David Maisel's aerial views of Utah's Great Salt Lake and its industrialized surroundings are jewel-colored abstractions.

On Thursday, August 3, curator Joanna Marsh will give a 6 p.m. gallery talk on Shifting Terrain as part of Phoenix Art After Hours: First Thursdays at the Atheneum.

Shifting Terrain coincides with two other photography exhibitions at the Wadsworth Atheneum: Eloquent Vistas: The Art of Nineteenth-Century Landscape Photography from the George Eastman House (June 2 - August 27) and Edward Weston: A Photographer's Love of Life (September 16 - December 31, 2006).

Shifting Terrain: Contemporary Landscape Photography is made possible in part by the members of the Contemporary Coalition: Mickey Cartin, The Cheryl Chase and Stuart Bear Family Foundation, Emilie and Raul R. de Brigard, Howard and Sandra Fromson, Nancy D. Grover and Robinson A. Grover, Carol and Sol LeWitt, Jeffrey G. and Marcia Reid Marsted, The Ritter Foundation, The Saunders Foundation, Philip and Robin Schonberger, and Linda Cheverton Wick and Walter Wick.

Additional support is provided by the Greater Hartford Arts Council's United Arts Campaign and by the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism.