Black Maps is the first in-depth survey of the major aerial projects by David Maisel, whose images of radically altered
terrain have transformed the practice of contemporary landscape photography. In more than 100 photos that span
Maisel’s career, Black Maps presents a hallucinatory worldview encompassing both stark documentary and tragic
metaphor, and exploring the relationship between nature and humanity today. Maisel’s images of environmentally
impacted sites consider the aesthetics of open pit mines, clear-cut forests, rampant urbanization and sprawl, and zones
of water reclamation. These surreal and disquieting photos take us towards the margins of the unknown and as the Los
Angeles Times has stated, “argue for an expanded definition of beauty, one that bypasses glamour to encompass the
damaged, the transmuted, the decomposed.”
Black Maps
American Landscape and the Apocalyptic Sublime
von David Maisel
