Marcia Mack
Marcia Mack documents both the compelling interplay of the natural landscape transformed by a poignant and often ironic human presence, and the constructed landscape transfigured by the natural—meticulously cultivated or persistently accidental.
Marcia received her BFA in photography from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and her MA in photography from California State University, Fullerton. She has exhibited in group shows both nationally and internationally. Mentors include Lewis Baltz, Jerry Burchfield, Eileen Cowin, Darryl Curran, Nicholas Nixon, and Stephen Shore.
She splits her time between Orange County and Darwin, California, an old mining town on the outskirts of Death Valley, miles from anywhere but home to her.
Artist’s Statement
As a photographer, I am interested in documenting the complex relationship between humans and the world around us, exploring the synergy between humankind and nature.
For the nearly 50 years that I have been making images of the American landscape, I have examined the idea of human intervention in the natural world and attempted to define the beauty and meaning that can be found there. I am intrigued with the objects that intersect with and humanize this landscape, while often contradicting and mitigating the sublime expanse of it.
More recently, I became attracted to the visually metaphoric possibilities of deserted urban and industrial landscapes. There is beauty and wonder to be found in the disordered and the ignored: I look at the constructed landscape transfigured by the natural and photograph the complexities of this tender relationship.
My images are hopeful views of an authentic and complex landscape. They seek to broaden the syntax of sentimental landscape photography, investigating the density of formal photographic elements in an effort to expand prevailing conventions of the picturesque.