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Laura McPhee

Judy Tracking Radio-Collared Wolves From Her Yard, Summer Range, H-Hook Ranch, Custer County, Idaho

Maker

Laura McPhee (American, b.1958), (RISD MFA 1986, Photography)

Title

Judy Tracking Radio-Collared Wolves From Her Yard, Summer Range, H-Hook Ranch, Custer County, Idaho
from the series *River of No Return*

Year

2004

Medium

  • Color chromogenic print

Materials/Techniques

Techniques

  • Color chromogenic print

Materials

ink

Supports

  • paper

Dimensions

Frame: 76.2 x 96.5 cm (30 x 38 inches)

Identification

Edition

2/5

Credit / Object Number

Credit

Purchased with funds donated by Donald Stanon and Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund

Object Number

2008.54

Type

  • Photographs

Publications

  • Books

America in View: Landscape Photography 1865 to Now

Exhibition History

America in View
Landscape Photography 1865 to Now
Sep 21, 2012 – Jan 13, 2013

Label copy

The title of this image gives away its mystery, but on first encounter one imagines that Laura McPhee must have invented this mystical woman in a white nightgown, standing alone in a golden field and raising an instrument to the expansive sky. Rather, Judy is entirely real, part of a family of scientists McPhee knew and photographed. The pictured ritual is Judy’s regular morning chore-it keeps the family and animals safe from wolves, which were controversially reintroduced to the area. While the image speaks to daily life in the Sawtooth Valley and to political issues surrounding the management of the land, it also suggests that our relationship to the land could still be sacred.

RISD and Photography
Jun 05, 2008 – Oct 26, 2008

Label copy

McPhee studied under Emmet Gowin at Princeton University before coming to RISD to earn her MFA. Like him, she is interested in how the natural world shapes and is shaped by human behavior. She has photographed all over the world. This recent project resulted from an artist’s residency in the Sawtooth Valley of central Idaho, where she examined in a magnificent setting the stereotype of the tough individualist, as well as the current debates over land use. McPhee spent a great deal of time with the family of the woman pictured here, who was photographed while checking for wolves to see if it were safe to let her daughter and dogs go outdoors. In an exhibition brochure for a show of her work at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, McPhee stated:

My interest lies in the dilemmas, and it is dilemma that I picture. While I

draw on the language of the nineteenth-century sublime, I am simultaneously

presenting twenty-first century conundrums. The images are sometimes

abstract and mystical; they are also replete with facts and arguments, though

not with answers.

Image use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use.

In copyright This object is in copyright

Tombstone

Laura McPhee (American, b.1958)
Judy Tracking Radio-Collared Wolves From Her Yard, Summer Range, H-Hook Ranch, Custer County, Idaho; from the series *River of No Return*, 2004
Color chromogenic print
Frame: 76.2 x 96.5 cm (30 x 38 inches)
Purchased with funds donated by Donald Stanon and Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund 2008.54

To request new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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