Terraforming: Olana’s Historic Photography Collection Unearthed

David Hartt’s visual excavation of the politics of landscape, photography and empire

Published for an exhibition curated by artist David Hartt, this volume focuses on the concept of "terraforming"—how land is shaped for human use throughout history—within the unique context of the monumental 250-acre earthwork at Frederic Edwin Church’s Olana in Hudson, New York. The book is composed of over 130 19th-century images, drawn from Olana’s permanent collection, by Désiré Charnay, Eadweard Muybridge and Carleton Watkins; these are seen as a nascent technology that became tools for expanding empires that used photography to chart new frontiers and to document the sediments of previous civilizations. The book also features documentation of the newly commissioned artistic intervention by Hartt that responds to the historic context of Olana itself, the artistic legacy of Church, and the way land is constantly shaped and reformed to reflect different and competing cultural values.