Kidney-shaped pools, boomerang curves, floating cantilevered decks, adventure playgrounds, sculptural Japanese maples, revolutionary new materials, the melding of Modern forms and classic sensibilities. The gardens and landscapes highlighted in the exhibition, Marvels of Modernism, possess subdued transitions between indoors and outdoors and bring attention to the innovative designs and the efforts to preserve them. The George Eastman House, in conjunction with The Cultural Landscape foundation, the organizers of the exhibition, looks at 12 important modernist landscapes through the lens of 10 photographers.

 

This project, is as much about photography as it is about its landscape subjects. Clear photographic choices have been made in this work, in technique, vantage point and printing style. The photographs displayed in Marvels of Modernism show how photographers’ choices both shape and are shaped by the landscapes themselves.

The 12 landscape in the exhibition are Lake Elizabeth (Allegheny Commons, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), Boston City Hall Plaza (Boston, Massachusetts), Estates Drive Reservoir (Oakland, California), Heritage Plaza (Heritage Park, Fort Worth,Texas), Kaiser Roof Garden (Kaiser Center, Oakland,California), Manhattan Square Park (Rochester, New York), Mill Creek Canyon Earthworks (Kent, Washington.), Miller Garden (Columbus, Indiana), El (Hato Rey, Puerto Rico), Pacific Science Center Courtyard (Seattle, Washington), Parkmerced (San Francisco, California), and Peavey Plaza (Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis, Minnesota).

 

The 10 photograhers represented in the exhibition are Sam Sweezy, Debra Bloomfield, Lupita Murillo Tinnen, Heather F. Wetzel, Rick McKee Hock, Christopher Rauschenberg, Tyagan Miller, Marisol Diaz, and Tom Fox.

All photographs are held in the collection of George Eastman. House International Museum of Photography and Film and are copyright the artist, unless otherwise noted.