- Paper Prayers
at Toshogu Shrine, Nikko, Japan -

Beginning in 1981, after a period of concentrating on still life, the world drew me outdoors again, this time with a 4" x 5" field camera.  For almost a decade my chief interest became these large-format color landscapes [see Portraits, however, for another subject pursued simultaneously.]  The landscapes were  shown as 16" x 20" Ektacolor prints made from 4" x 5" color negatives.

At first the pictures were taken around Chicago, in gardens and inhabited places, but later they included more completely natural settings as I was able to travel to several sites in the 1980s, and moved twice, to Minnesota, then to Michigan.  In all of the photographs I was after a different feeling from my earlier Art History of Ephemera pictures-less ironic and more lyrical - yet never in denial about what a “real” landscape looked like in the late 20th century. 

Doing this work, I developed a strong interest in the landscapes of other women photographers and the alternative tradition they represented, and in 1987 I curated, for the Tweed Museum of Art, a historical exhibition of 26 women photographers, Reclaiming Paradise: American Women Photograph the Land.