Snake Bight, Everglades. Circa 1986. Archival pigment print. 24" x 64"
PHIL SPACE is pleased to present the photographs of Mary Peck in conjunction with the launch of her book, Everglades: Time’s Discipline, featuring an essay by William deBuys. The photographs were made thirty years ago when the Everglades were already profoundly altered by surrounding development and water contamination. DeBuys political and environmental history brings us to the present and the realities of climate change. Combined with Peck’s photographs the book makes clear the pronounced tension between the everyday beauty that exists in the world and the undeniable loss we face.
Over the past forty years Mary Peck has traveled to various parts of the world to photograph natural and at times enigmatic landscapes, observing the signs of geological processes, the cycles of weather, and the traces of human activity. In the series Temples of Greece, Peck's black and white photographs on a Mediterranean island depict dramatic and seemingly uninhabited places that are punctuated by the timeworn forms of ancient ruins, such as the remnants of a stone wall or a few standing pillars on the edge of a cliff. Peck completed the series in 1979, four years after she graduated from Utah State University, placing it among her early work. But these photographs share with her later photographs an expansive sense of space and a rich tonal range that convey the grandeur and beauty of these settings. In more recent years Peck has photographed in locations such as Bhutan, Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, and Washington State's Olympic Peninsula, where she currently lives. (Bio from Museum of Contemporary Photography)
Circa 1984. Archival pigment print. 24" x 64"