Hoh River Valley, Olympic Peninsula

Mary Peck, American, born 1952

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1991

Gelatin silver print

1/25

Sheet: 11 1/8 × 31 1/4 in. (28.3 × 79.3 cm)

Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through the Hood Museum of Art Acquisitions Fund

© Mary Peck

PH.995.28

Geography

Place Made: United States, North America

Period

20th century

Object Name

Photograph

Research Area

Photograph

Not on view

Inscriptions

Signed, in graphite, lower right, on mat: Mary Peck

Label

Moss hangs from every available surface in this photograph, softening the densely tangled understory of the Hoh River Valley, a temperate rainforest on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Peering into the underbrush, photographer Mary Peck trains her lens on this unique ecosystem, challenging our expectations of landscape photography. The wide-angle shot captures the masses of lichens and ferns rather than a deeply receding panorama, trading landscape’s traditional recession into space for a shallow field of hyper-abundant biodiversity.

From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art


Course History

ANTH 7.05, Animals and Humans, Laura Ogden, Winter 2022

GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ARTH 5.01, Introduction to Contemporary Art, Mary Coffey and Chad Elias, Winter 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

SPAN 65.15, Wonderstruck: Archives and the Production of Knowledge in an Unequal World, Silvia Spitta and Barbara Goebel, Summer 2022

Exhibition History

Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 21, 1995-January 2, 1996.

Recent Acquisitions: Contemporary Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 24-April 12, 1998.

The Photographer's Eye, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, SArt 29 & 30, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, May 8-June 13, 2003.

This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 5–April 11, 2022.

Provenance

Mary Peck, Port Angeles, Washington; sold to present collection, 1995.

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