Saturday Sunset Series Event
Saturday September 1, 2012 7:30 PM
Photo Exhibition, Labor Day Weekend
Robber’s Roost Bookstore, Torrey, Utah
James Swensen, an Assistant Professor of Art History at BYU will present a photo exhibit and media presentation focusing on “The History of Photographing Capitol Reef National Park”.
As with other areas of natural beauty, photography has played an important role in the representation of Capitol Reef National Park. From early photographers making Daguerreotypes to Ansel Adams and Minor White the area has lured many eager to explore its diversity and grandeur. This presentation, “Picturing Wonderland,” will explore this history and look at the way in which photography has shaped the ways we look at the place once called “Wayne’s Wonderland.”
Ansel Adams, Capitol Reef, 1947
Dr. James R. Swensen is an assistant professor of art history and the history of photography at Brigham Young University. His research interests include the photography of great surveys of the Western United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the work of the New Deal’s Farm SecurityAdministration.
He has recently completed a book on Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams project Three Mormon Towns (to be published in 2012) and is in the process of completing a manuscript on the connections between John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath and the photography. His presentation on the images of Capitol Reef is part of a larger, ongoing project that explores the photography of Utah and its national parks.
Minor White, Bullet Holes, Capitol Reef National Monument, 1961