BOSTON, MA.- The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) presents Laura McPhee: River of No Return. Sweeping in its scope, this exhibition examines conflicting ideas about landscape and land use in America and investigates our values and beliefs about the natural world. It comprises 40 large-scale photographs––on view for the first time––taken during a period of more than two years in Sawtooth Valley, a remote area of central Idaho. The impressive size of these color photographs (8 feet by 6 feet, and 6 feet by 8 feet) evokes romanticized 19th-century landscape paintings by showing idealized images of the land. In addition to beholding idyllic panoramas of natural beauty found in photographs such as Fourth of July Creek Ranch, Custer County, Idaho, July 8, 2003 (2003), viewers of these striking photographs also witness the realities of human interaction with the natural world such as the bloody scene in Quartered Rocky Mountain Elk, Milky Creek, White Cloud Mountains, Idaho (2004) and the ravages of strip mining in Cyanide Evaporation Pool by the River of No Return Wilderness, Grouse Creek Lead, Silver and Gold Mine, Yankee Fork, Idaho (2005). With this new body of work, McPhee explores the dilemmas of our contemporary notion of a utopian American landscape. Laura McPhee: River of No Return will remain on view through September 17, 2006 in the Foster and Rabb Galleries.

This exhibition is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Generous support was provided by The Alturas Foundation, a family foundation representing four generations in the American West dedicated to visual arts and American culture. In 2003, the Foundation selected artist Laura McPhee to work in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho as its initial artist-in-residence. The collection of her remarkable photographs, River of No Return, is the result of her Alturas Foundation residency exploring the places and the people of this region. The Alturas Foundation is proud to support Laura McPhee in her work.

“Just as dreams of the American West have long inspired wonder and desire, Laura McPhee’s photographs capture the beauty, awe, and complexity of modern-day America,” said Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA. “We’re pleased to share with the MFA audience these revealing works by McPhee, a prominent Boston-based contemporary artist.”

For American pioneers, the West held the promise of new domains and opportunities. For American visionaries, it embodied one of the last outposts of the imagination––a wilderness whose primeval beauties and dangers incarnated the quintessential Romantic experience. This promise and experience was captured in the panoramic landscape paintings of such artists as Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran. While McPhee draws on the language of her 19th-century predecessors, she simultaneously poses questions about our unique 21st-century predicament and asks: Is the promise of the American West still alive today or has our notion of a utopian American landscape ever been more than just a myth? In presenting a world that is both beautiful and shocking, McPhee has imagined a future that none of the early landscape painters could have ever envisioned.

“The myth of a big, open space where you can live out your dreams rests like an escape hatch in our collective imagination, even if in reality very little of that space is left, and the dream itself remains embattled,” said Laura McPhee. “The images in this body of work sometimes appear elusive and mystical, yet they’re loaded with facts and arguments––though, not with solutions. My interest lies in exploring dilemmas, and the dilemmas are what I picture.”

For McPhee, Idaho’s Sawtooth Valley is a microcosm of America as a whole and the plight that communities and people nationwide face when dealing with land issues. It was essential for her to be present in Idaho, through two cycles of seasons, to gain enough familiarity with the landscape to capture these images. Lugging her cumbersome 8 x 10 view camera and tripod through the wilds––such as a photographer would have done 150 years ago––McPhee uses 19th-century techniques in the age of digital technology. The resulting large-scale color photographs recall romantic landscape paintings in their idealization of the sublime while simultaneously present the complex reality of life in the 21st century.

A recurring subject in Laura McPhee: River of No Return is Mattie, a beautiful teenaged woman who lives in Sawtooth Valley. As protagonist of the story that McPhee is telling––specifically about Sawtooth Valley, but also about America at large––the six larger-than-life portraits of Mattie, taken from age 12 to age 14, vividly underscore the paradoxes found in modern rural life. Mattie is portrayed as a typical American teenager whether she is lying barefoot on the back of a horse in Mattie, Bob and Bo, Road Creek, Custer County, Idaho (2005), or, wearing flip flops with painted red toenails while holding a dead turkey in Mattie with a Bourbon Red Turkey, Laverty Ranch, Custer County, Idaho, November, 2004 (2004).

“These large and remarkable photographs reveal both the jarring reality and the tentative serenity of America,” said William Stover, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, and curator for this exhibition. “The dilemma between nature and culture is one that is eternally complex. Laura McPhee’s photographs successfully illustrate this contested relationship within the context of one group of people living in a remote area.”

A resident of the Boston area, McPhee graduated from Princeton University, Summa Cum Laude with a BA, and went on to get her MFA at Rhode Island School of Design. Since 1986, she has been Professor of Photography at Massachusetts College of Art. This is her first major solo museum exhibition.