ART REVIEW : TWO VIEWS OF THE WEST, OLD, NEW

SAN DIEGO —  From the Sierra Nevadas’ crashing waterfalls, to the Anza Borrego Desert’s prickly beauty, to the steady intrusion of civilization, the images in “Visions of the West: Two Views from Two Centuries” portray a changing West, as well as the changing attitudes of photographers toward the West.

“Visions,” at the Museum of Photographic Arts through Oct. 4, is actually two exhibits. One captures the artistic vision of 14 contemporary Western photographers. The other exhibit offers by comparison, the Western scenes captured by major 19th-Century landscape photographers: Romanticized images of Yosemite Canyon by Eadweard Muybridge, who was a 19th-Century pioneer in motion picture photography, may be compared to Joel Sternfeld’s ironic view of an upside down Cadillac, toppled by a California mud slide.

The museums’s executive director, Arthur Ollman, curated the 19th-Century Western landscapes exhibit as a companion piece for “Visions of the West,” the traveling contemporary show, co-curated by Tucson gallery director, Terry Etherton.

“It’s a thrill to see this together,” Etherton said as he walked through both exhibits Friday. Waving his hand at the huge, laser-sharp images of 19th-Century photographer, Carleton Watkins, Etherton said, “All of these people in one way or another influenced the (contemporary Western landscape) artists.” It was the photographs of men such as Muybridge, Watkins, Timothy O’Sullivan and William Bell (whose works are in the show) that gave much of the world its first images of the West.

Ollman paired the 19th-Century exhibit with the contemporary show to compare and contrast how the West and Western landscape photography have changed.

“The artistic approach of the older artists was primarily documentation,” Ollman said. “The American West had wilderness. It had never changed since prehistory.” The early photographers were commissioned to go with survey teams to show Congress and Easterners what was out West. “They could send a photographer out West and absolutely believe everything he sent back,” Ollman said.

The images made by early masters of the camera such as Timothy O’Sullivan, a protege of Civil War photographer Matthew Brady, reveal a mighty, untamed and seemingly unconquerable land.

“The landscape and the Indians looked obdurate, like they couldn’t be moved,” Ollman said. “But both were incredibly vulnerable. In less than 100 years, the wilderness and the Indians were subdued.”

To Etherton, the West is still wild, if not undamaged. “It’s the only place in the United States you can see 150 miles on a clear day,” he said. “When I got interested in photography, the first pictures I saw were by Ansel Adams. I thought that’s how it looked, spectacular and dramatic all the time. But I quickly learned that doesn’t tell the whole story.”

The show he co-curated with Michael Berman is an attempt to capture the West as it is today as viewed by 14 contemporary artists. “All these people are photographing the same general area, but they have a very different point of view about it.”

Etherton has attempted to balance the different views. “I could have done a very political show . . . the rape of the West, but I didn’t want to do that because there’s a lot of it that’s not raped.”

Works of contemporary photographers on exhibit include Dick Arentz, Jay Dusard and Mark Klett, whose images are similar to those of the 19th-Century artists: contact prints that are not manipulated in the dark room.

At the other end of the spectrum are the conceptual works by Meridel Rubenstein and Robbert Flick, complex assemblages of images created as photographic montages.

Etherton, genuinely impressed with the 19th-Century prints, spoke of how far the medium has progressed.

“You’d think now with all the modern technology that you can make better pictures than these guys ever made,” he said. “But when you look at one of the Watkins prints and see the beauty of it . . . . He paused. “In a lot of ways we’ve come a long way. In other ways, we haven’t come any way at all.”

Etherton pointed to a Watkins’ print of a giant sequoia. “With all the modern cameras that these people are using, you can’t do it any more beautiful than that. I mean look at that. This is over 100 years old.”