The striking collection of photographic art presented in the Carnegie Museum of Art’s Widening the Lens is very much a revision of the long tradition of landscape photography in the US. It may be very directly revising – as in AK Burns’s reinvention of landscape photographs literally ripped from photo books – or it may be much more subtly so, as with Sam Contis’s careful deconstructions of the iconography of the American west. However so, this is a show very much about counter-narratives, hidden histories, reinscription, reinvention, and revision.

Borne of a desire to consider how our relationship with images has shifted as photography has become shockingly more ubiquitous and prolific, Widening the Lens looks at photographs both as singular objects as well as pieces integrated into larger objects. It is a show that strives to be responsive to how the lines between photography and other artistic media have become blurred, and one that seeks to imagine what environmental photography looks like now.

Appropriate to this long look at imagery and landscape, Widening the Lens is grouped into four major through lines: colonial legacies, landscape as a memorial site, human adaptability and mobility, and environmental anxiety. These themes take us temporally through the past, present and future, and they offer useful ways to draw interconnections between the sometimes cacophonous array of artwork brought together for this exhibition. “We’re trying to tell these stories that have both happened in history,” said Dan Leers, exhibition curator, “but also hopefully charting some possible courses forward for humanity.”

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Examining Xaviera Simmons’s Sundown series, named for so-called sundown towns, which become extremely unsafe for African Americans after dark, one finds self-portraits in which the artist inhabits a carefully arranged tableaux of elements that conjures landscapes where Black people were exploited. In each, she holds up various images toward the camera, inviting us to imagine how the imagistic history of the United States has shaped the identities of her subjects. One such images reads: “The myth of the American Frontier still shapes US racial divides,” suggesting that the deep history of the American landscape and its representation is still very live in contemporary struggles over inequality.

One standout collection from the show are photographs taken from Justine Kurland’s now 20-year-old series Girl Pictures. In it, Kurland envisions a world of teenage girl runaways in which her protagonists are seen boldly transiting through various natural landscapes, both wildernesses and liminal zones at the edges of urban areas. It is a narrative of how these girls might transit the land in a world much different and much safer for them to grow up in.

“It’a not documentary, not a re-enactment, it’s about using photography to build a world that seemed more equitable and just,” Kurland told me. She shared that part of the drive to create Girl Pictures came out of the problematic history of landscape photography, where the camera – most often held my a male photographer – has been used to conquer and dominate. By contrast. she aimed to create a landscape that the girls were not seen as settling into, but rather one in which the landscape was holding them, offering a sense of interdependency.

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The photos in Girl Pictures are first striking for the simple beauty that Kurland finds in the landscapes; her iconography comes across as gentle and intimate, these places seen more in bite-sized chunks where the girls can find moments of refuge, connection, strength, and play. Forest, in particular, with the two large tree trunks that frame the image, offering a place of restfulness and connection for the girls, and with the gentle layers of light drifting off into the background depths, creates a feeling of peace and harmony, very much suggesting the holding that Kurland wants her landscapes to be doing.

“Even though Kurland’s images are some of the earliest photographs in the show,” Leers told me, “these photos feel so present and contemporary in so many ways. They’re what a world might look like populated by strong, young, independent women. It’s really exciting.” The selections from Girl Pictures are easily one of the standout groupings from Widening the Lens, and a strong reason in and of themselves to see this exhibition.

Lucy Raven’s shadowgrams, which were made by firing objects filled with magnesium, aluminum and gravel at pieces of photosensitive paper, come across as mysterious and somewhat opaque. (It was probably not lost on Raven that shadowgrams were used to advance weapons and flight technologies, two key components in subduing the west.) These pieces are a very different take on the photographic medium, one that challenges the idea of representation itself, and that pushes Widening the Lens into very different territory.

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Another aspect of Widening the Lens is the six-part podcast that will be released in conjunction with it. Based around themes like myth-making, dominion and impressions, the podcast welcomes guests including artists, curators, geologists, film-makers, writers, poets and more. It’s hosted by tennis great Venus Williams, whom Leers explained was picked after a lengthy search for the perfect individual to partner with. “We wanted someone with a broader reach,” he shared. “In conversation with Williams and her team, we understood she’s very deeply engaged with the contemporary arts world. She’s very engaged in thinking about the role that arts can play.”

The podcast is a part of a wider ambition taken on by the Carnegie Museum of Art to engage with audiences who might never make it through the museum’s doors to attend Widening the Lens in person. According to Leers, these goals had been sparked by the period of disconnect during the Covid shutdown. “We need to be more responsive in meeting our audiences where they are,” he said. “We want to give everyone a chance to try and engage with all of our projects.”

Widening the Lens is a very diverse body of work, almost imbuing the show with a kind of “everything but the kitchen sink” feeling, and its capaciousness and openness feels very appropriate for an exhibition trying to re-examine the rules for the American landscape. It is also very much one that is about wondering how our pasts, both longer and more recent, will continue to evolve forward into the future. It is Leers’s hope that anyone who visits Widening the Lens will take some time to consider the question of impacts, and let that inform their actions in the future. “I hope audiences might think for even one extra second how their actions today are going to impact my surroundings now and in the future,” Leers said. “I hope they’ll understand that those impacts can magnify, expand, resonate in the future.”

• Widening the Lens: Photography, Ecology, and the Contemporary Landscape is now on display at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pennsylvania until 12 January 2025

Kirstie Marie, Cowgirl 30 Under 30 alumn, has a real life unicorn on her hands! Kirstie mainly rides Ruf N Tuf Cocktail, a 2017 gelding by Wimpyneedsacocktail, bareback but has occasionally shown him in ranch versatility events. He also enjoys modeling for her business, Kirstie Marie Photography. He is featured on a billboard in Tioga for Dennards and 100x Equine, appears on two feed bags for Standlee Forage, and is wrapped on a trailer for EM Custom Show Pads.

Kirstie said, “We bought him in 2021 as a roping prospect for my husband, a horse to teach my young daughter how to ride, and a horse for me to enjoy. I grew up riding as a child, showed competitively as a youth, and then rode on scholarship for TCU’s women’s equestrian team. After college, I entered my “horseless horse girl” era and started my equine portrait photography business to fill the void. Since I didn’t have a horse to ride myself, The photography business allowed me to pet pretty horses each day and live vicariously through my clients. Mojo was the first horse I owned as an adult, and my first horse to own in 10 years. He quickly became the unicorn of our dreams! At His first ever horse show ever, his first class was the leadline with my daughter. Over the next year he went on to win nearly $30,000 in ARHFA and Riata Buckle roping events.”

INDIANA (WTHI) – The Indiana State Department of Agriculture is hosting a photography contest this summer. It’s asking for Hoosier photographers to submit pictures of all things “agriculture”. The contest was created to recognize the hard work and dedication of Indiana’s farmers.

“Each and every Hoosier is welcome to submit an entry to the contest,” said Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, Indiana’s Secretary of Agriculture and Rural Development. “No matter the camera equipment you own, we encourage you to submit your best images showcasing Indiana agriculture.”

There are several categories to which you can submit photos.

• On the Farm: Showcasing any building, piece of equipment or activity that is a part of life on an Indiana farm.
• Faces of Agriculture: Featuring those who grow and produce food, fuel and fiber in Indiana.
• Agritourism: Spotlighting Indiana’s seasonal and agricultural destinations, such as orchards, wineries and farmers markets.
• Conservation: Highlighting Indiana’s natural beauty with landscapes, water and wildlife.

Ten winners will be selected and invited to attend a special ceremony at the Indiana State Fair. Contest winners will also have their photographs featured in the offices of the Lt. Governor’s Family of Business in Indianapolis throughout the year.

Contestants can submit up to five photos in digital format accommodated by a submission form for each photo. Photos will be evaluated based on creativity, composition and category representation. Entries must be submitted by 5:00 p.m. (ET) on June 30, 2024.

Click here for entry forms, guidelines and criteria.

Elusive, crystallized in a fleeting moment in time—undefined. This is the impression we get when examining the shots of Charlie Tallott, winner of the Photo London X Nikon Emerging Photographer Award. At Least Until The World Stops Going Around is a project—also turned into a book—that was born during an extremely dramatic period for the photographer. Through photography, Tallott has undoubtedly found a way to tell his story, albeit indirectly, and to show us even the darkest sides of his personal experiences.

Dopo un ricovero lungo tre mesi si è rifugiato quindi nelle immagini seguendo il mantra ripetutogli dalla madre: «hai sempre domani», molto simile a «il sole sorgerà anche domani». Il percorso seguito da Tallott, nel corso della realizzazione di questo progetto, sembra non seguire una linea specifica e come il fotografo stesso spiega al The Guardian che «non c’è una correlazione tra queste cose, ma suppongo che sia più la sensazione del fotografo che sarà sempre imposto sulle immagini in qualche modo. Immagino che si possa vedere la mia impronta attraverso tutto». La presenza di Charlie Tallott sembra trasparire quindi dal carico emozionale che portano con sé questi scatti; l’aggressività del flash e il metodo non raccontano il mondo esterno ma quello che accade nella testa del fotografo.

After a three-month hospitalization, he sought refuge in images, following the mantra his mother repeated to him: «you always have tomorrow,» very similar to «the sun will rise again tomorrow.» The path Tallott followed in the course of creating this project does not seem to follow a specific line, and as the photographer himself explains to The Guardian, «there is no correlation between these things, but I suppose it’s more the feeling of the photographer that will always be imposed on the images somehow. I guess you can see my imprint throughout it all.» Charlie Tallott’s presence thus seems to emerge from the emotional weight these shots carry; the aggressiveness of the flash and the method do not tell the external world but what is happening in the photographer’s mind.

courtesy Charlie Tallott

Provincetown is a fishing village turned art colony at the tip of Cape Cod, a curling peninsula on America’s north-eastern coast. In US terms, it’s an old town, and since the first half of the 20th century, it has been a haven for artists, musicians, queer people and bohemians who descend on the town every summer.

Tennessee Williams lived there, lots of the abstract expressionists holidayed there, and the Velvet Underground played there in the 1960s. There’s a cultural pedigree to the place that has made it a magnet for creative people, including the man in this image, my friend and fellow artist, Billy Hough.

Billy is one of the most brash and sparkling performers I’ve ever encountered. He has an act called Scream Along with Billy, where he performs beloved rock albums in their entirety in an improvised cabaret style. He’s also in a band with his two brothers called Garage Dogs. The three of them are sort of the ultimate outlaws – there’s a punk spirit to them that’s just intoxicating.

He and his brothers are southern boys. Billy’s accent has faded now, but his brothers both still have their thick drawl. They’re rough, ready, always up for a good time, and they’re local heroes on the performance circuit in Provincetown. I first encountered Billy performing in someone else’s show. He was captivating and we’ve been friends ever since.

This image was a promotional shot for Garage Dogs. It’s almost a mugshot. It’s clean and simple; I wanted something as free of narrative as possible. But the beauty, I think, is in the detail. Digital photography offers a level of granularity that analogue cameras couldn’t achieve. It allows you to see the pores and folds of a man’s skin, his stretch marks and hair where there perhaps shouldn’t be any. That’s what this image is: a portrait of a person, and a body, as they actually are.

Early in my career, almost everything I shot was soft-focus, overexposed or fuzzy. I shot on analogue and my work was all about capturing a romantic quality – glimpses of a world that were momentary and fleeting. But when I moved from analogue to digital, I became kind of obsessed with exactly the opposite: incredibly sharp focus, crisp details and an almost insane level of information being expressed in each frame. When it works, it produces a new kind of intimacy, or maybe a kind of voyeurism. You can see everything.

I’ve photographed men throughout my career, but the way I shoot them has changed. In my earlier work, sex runs through a lot of my images. There was a narrative going on: the subject might be sitting on the edge of the bed, looking directly at the lens, completely available to me, the photographer, and to the viewer.

With the new pictures I have really tried to make a steady effort not to have sex on offer. Not out of prudishness, but because the increasing sexualisation of our culture has maybe made it less interesting. In the physique photography of the 1950s, there was something powerful in the eroticism of the naked male body. But now, when so much of our culture is pornographic, it feels less transgressive. Maybe there’s no way to shoot male nudity without an element of sex to it, maybe that’s a useless proposition – but I want to do something that is, to use a cliche, slightly more elevated.

In some ways I’m quite old school: I don’t really think photography is art. It’s hard for a photograph, especially a colour one, to have an aura in the way that great paintings do. Photography has to work much harder to earn its place on a gallery wall. The idea of going to a gallery to see moderately sized pictures in identical frames, hung at the same height all the way around is boring to me. Most of the time, I think photography belongs in books. That’s its natural medium. It has to do something in a gallery that it can’t achieve in your lap, whether in an album or on a phone. For me, that means pairing images in unusual ways, showing wear and tear on the paper, collaging – anything to bring the image into conversation with other images and its surroundings.

Jack Pierson’s work is showing at the Lisson Gallery, London, until 3 August

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Jack Pierson’s CV

Born: Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1960
Trained: Massachusetts College of Art
Influences: “Ian Archie Beck, Pat Milo, Vincenzo Galdi”
High point: “That my career in photography has lasted as long as it has”
Low point: “None spring to mind”
Top tip: “Make friends with your shadow”