Mark Klett's latest work “Third View” on exhibit at ASU’s Computing Commons Gallery

TEMPE, Ariz. - Mark Klett, the photographer and Arizona State University Regents' professor whose critically acclaimed rephotographic projects show centuries of change in the American landscape, will show his work Third View at the ASU Computing Commons Gallery, March 23 - May 5.

For the Third View project, Klett and his team revisited 109 historic western American landscape sites and made new comparative photographs based on past geology. The team - Kyle Bajakian, William L. Fox, Michael Marshall, Toshi Ueshina and Byron Wolfe - also kept field diaries and collected materials to help interpret the scenes.

Most of the sites originally were photographed for geological surveys in the 1860s and 1870s. Klett photographed "second views" in the 1970s, and photographed the "third views" from 1997-2000. The project was the basis for the 2004 publication and interactive DVD, Third Views, Second Sights: A Rephotographic Survey of the American West. The gallery exhibition includes photographs, the book, DVD presentation, and computers to access the highly interactive Third View Web site athttp://www.thirdview.org

Klett and collaborator Byron Wolfe will lecture on the project March 30, 3-4 p.m., at the ASU Matthews Center, Intelligent Stage.

Klett says the Third View project takes a new look at the first photographs of the American West.

"The pictures document physical changes to the land over a 130-year period, while also conveying the impact of contemporary culture," he said. "The project is unique in the way it visualizes change by combining photography and animation with contextual materials collected at each site, including sounds, oral interviews and video. The result is a unique foray into photography and interactive media that provides a new perspective on space and time."

Computing Commons Gallery Director Sheilah Britton said ASU's Institute for Studies in the Arts saw the significance of Mark Klett and his collaborators' work in 1998. "The ISA supported Third View with a grant to create the project's first Web site. The cultural and historical significance of this work is now available globally for Web visitors to witness the footprint of man and nature on the landscape of the American West," she said.

Klett, a professor in ASU's Herberger College of Fine Arts since 1996, has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Buhl Foundation and the Japan/US Friendship Commission. His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally and is held collections at the Museums of Modern Art in New York and San Francisco; the Whitney Museum, New York; the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

In addition to Third View, Klett is the author of twelve books, including Yosemite in Time; After the Ruins; Second View, the Rephotographic Survey Project; Revealing Territory; Traces of Eden; and One City /Two Visions.

The Computing Commons Gallery, administered by ASU's Arts, Media and Engineering Program, has highly adaptable power and lighting options and more than 30 Ethernet connections to facilitate work with a focus on art and technology. It is located on the ground floor of ASU's high-traffic, centrally located student computing center at Palm Walk and Orange Street. Hours are Monday - Friday, 10 a.m.- 4 p.m. For more information, call 480-965-9438 or visithttp://ame.asu.edu/news/index.html.

The Arts, Media and Engineering graduate research and education program was developed within the Institute for Studies in the Arts, an interdisciplinary research and education center in the Herberger College of Fine Arts at Arizona State University. AME/ISA are co-sponsored by the Herberger College of Fine Arts and the Fulton School of Engineering at ASU. For more information about the AME/ISA, visit http://ame.asu.edu.

Media Contact:
Denise Tanguay 
480.965.7144
denise.tanguay@asu.edu