SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- In The New Frontier,, emerging photographer Tobias Hutzler presents a captivating and contemporary vision of the evolving American West. Hutzler mines the concept of a 21st century urban frontier landscape, inspired by the evocative image of the empty space in downtown Las Vegas left behind by the former hotel, The New Frontier.

“These photographs are a mirror for current sociological and cultural developments,” says Hutzler. “In other cultures, buildings are constructed for longevity. In the American West, on the other hand, construction projects fill the needs of the moment: a constant change and reinvention.” Drawing on the historical significance of frontier exploration in the America, Hutzler implores his viewers to approach the large-scale, vibrant photographs as a metaphor for a current search for identity. Hutzler focuses on the physical change transpiring in the image, observing the present structures and open space together as a threshold to a new future, a new modernism.

A native of Germany, Hutzler is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship Award through its Foreign Student Program and a prestigious DAAD Award Grant. Soon to graduate with his MFA in Photography from San Francisco’s renowned Academy of Art University, Hutzler’s The New Frontier is a striking and provocative thesis exhibit. Employing the technology of advanced digital photography from a global point of view, Hutzler’s artwork acts beyond the boundaries of aesthetics and boldly explores the vast possibilities of visual media.

Hutzler creates his large-scale photographs with a unique technical approach, resulting in images that are printed as they are shot, without manipulation or compositing. Photographing with small-scale digital sensors, Hutzler achieves a distinctive digital noise quality, allowing for the characteristics of raw digital technique to have a powerful effect on the final photograph. “This photographic approach builds tension between the large-scale scenes and the digital noise and fragments, resulting in an aesthetic beauty of its own, contrary to aiming for higher resolutions and dynamic ranges,” says Hutzler. “My photography is searching for a truth between the aesthetic of the medium and the subject matter of the image.”