William Binzen
Azimuth
Terrain and Direction: Deciphering the West
March 2—April 3, 2016
To create the monumental color and black-and-white prints for his series, Azimuth, photographer William Binzen has focused his 8x10 view camera on the vast expanses of the American West, documenting the ways in which humans have visibly altered these landscapes. The artist’s large-format negatives have made sizable panoramic reproductions of his images possible, presenting viewers with the exquisite details of the terrain as well as making the consequences of human expansion clearly visible from lens to horizon.
“Azimuth deals with reading traces in the landscape where history and lore linger still, before being overwritten by modernity. Azimuth seeks to find what directions we’re moving in as we reevaluate and reshape the Western landscape. What are the implications of our development decisions? What kinds of custodians are we? What is the worth of land left alone? How do land-use decisions affect us socially? Is beauty in landscape, void of cliché, still possible?”
William Binzen is a photographer and musician based in northern California. He received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and he has been instrumental in making art a major focus of Burning Man. He has exhibited most recently at Rhythmix Gallery in Alameda, California; Liberty Fine Art Gallery and the Nevada Historical Society in Reno, Nevada; Calumet Gallery in San Francisco; and Dragonfly Gallery in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts. Binzen's work is housed in the collections of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, The Mountain Play Association in San Rafael, California, the Burning Man Project in San Francisco, and the Polaroid Permanent Print Collection.