Deborah Bright

Bright has created several bodies of landscape photographs on sites of contested terrain, from American Civil War battlefields to the State of Israel. This photograph is from a series inspired by the concept of Manifest Destiny, the 19th-century doctrine that justified expansion of the U.S. across the continent. Bright examines the history of land ownership in the Northeast through its stone walls. Once Native Americans were removed and trees were cleared, settlers delineated the property lines of their farms with these walls. They signify, in her words, “the will of generations of white settlers to ‘tame the wilderness’ and make it productive.” The unusual color of her image refers back to late 19th-century photographic processes, such as the commonly used albumen print.