Landscape in Question:
Selected Work from the John Pfahl Trust

“Pure and natural landscapes don’t interest me at all. I try to get people to think about the landscape as an intellectual construct.”

—John Pfahl

October 16 - November 15, 2025
 

*Gallery Talk with Curators Therese Mulligan and Becky Simmons*
Thursday, October 23, 5:00 pm
Free // All Welcome

William Harris Gallery
Gannett Hall 3030, RIT Campus
Free and open to the public
Parking in Lots E or F, free after 5 PM and on weekends. 

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Curated by Therese Mulligan and Becky Simmons

For more than forty years, photographer and former RIT faculty member John Pfahl (1939-2020) advanced a diverse and compelling artistic commentary on the natural environment, emphasizing the intervening role of humankind, science and technology. In landscapes majestic and mundane, he brought a well-honed conceptual thinking to his pictorial views, exhibiting a keen interest in the complex “reality” of the photographic image as well as the natural prospects at hand.

Inventively, Pfahl plumbed the tension between the supposed objective “truth” of the camera-made view and the subjective nature of photography as the photographer selects, frames and interprets the view into a constructed representation of reality. For example, in his renowned series, Altered Landscapes, Pfahl manipulated the landscape by wittily inserting mundane objects, illustrating how cameras skew and misrepresent three-dimensional space. In later series, including Power Places, the time-honored majesty of the American landscape is on full, picturesque display, even as it ominously harbors the industrial complexes of nuclear plants and power generators. 

In this exhibition, a compilation of series from Pfahl’s long career is presented to showcase his singular vision of the conceptual intersections of the photographic medium and the natural world, and our human relationship to both. To highlight, as he wrote:  “… pictures that work on a more mysterious level, that approach the truth by a more circuitous route.” 

The work on display here derives from the John Pfahl Trust, established by the artist to “enhance the artwork and understanding” of his prodigious artistic legacy. The Trust, located in Rochester, NY, maintains and preserves an archive of over 5,000 objects, dating from Pfahl’s earliest experimentations in photography of the early 1960s through work completed before his death in 2020. It houses the artist’s most recognized photographic series and publications as well as personal papers and ephemera.