RECONSTRUCTING THE VIEW: The Grand Canyon Photography of Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe

Reconstructing the View, a four-year photographic project exploring the Grand Canyon, dramatically expands on Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe’s previous collaborations, resulting in a diverse body of work distinguished by its diversity, sense of humor, and power. Calling on a wealth of images of the canyon, ranging from historical photographs by William Bell and William Henry Holmes to well-known artworks by Edward Weston and Ansel Adams to ephemera and souvenir postcards, Klett and Wolfe used digital postproduction methods to bring the original images into dialogue with their own photography. Reconstructing the View interrogates a broad range of issues, including the passage of time and how it is manifest in photography; changing cultural assumptions and perspectives; how images are circulated; and understanding the role photographers—both anonymous and great—have played in picturing American places.

Reconstructing the View is also a collaborative publishing project, initiated by the Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, and produced by HurleyMedia for the University of California Press under the direction of Kari Dahlgren, the art history editor.

Rebecca Senf, PhD, is Acting Senior Curator at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and Norton Family Curator at Phoenix Art Museum.

Stephen J. Pyne, PhD, is Professor, Human Dimensions Faculty, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University.