Sean McFarland
Sean McFarland’s landscape photography explores the relationships between nature and man-made, entangling this dichotomy into his methodology by manipulating his images with a variety of analog photographic techniques. Inspired by fabricated representations of nature such as postcards, natural history museum displays, and images from the Whole Earth Catalog, McFarland too creates fabricated landscape imagery. At times, his work involves re-photographing images from delusory perspectives and in other instances, McFarland creates images that may appear to be a starry sky, or the silhouette of a mountain range, but are instead, abstractions of commonplace objects like glistening sidewalk concrete or broken shards of glass. Throughout his work, McFarland explores a deep interest in the relationship between truth and falsity in the photographic image.
McFarland’s solo exhibitions include San Francisco International Airport Museum, SF Camerawork in San Francisco, White Columns in New York, and Stephen Wirtz Gallery in San Francisco. Group exhibitions include Richard L. Nelson Gallery at the University of California, Davis, Aperture in New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and Kala Art Institute in Berkeley. McFarland has been the recipient of numerous wards, grants, and fellowships including The …
Sean McFarland’s landscape photography explores the relationships between nature and man-made, entangling this dichotomy into his methodology by manipulating his images with a variety of analog photographic techniques. Inspired by fabricated representations of nature such as postcards, natural history museum displays, and images from the Whole Earth Catalog, McFarland too creates fabricated landscape imagery. At times, his work involves re-photographing images from delusory perspectives and in other instances, McFarland creates images that may appear to be a starry sky, or the silhouette of a mountain range, but are instead, abstractions of commonplace objects like glistening sidewalk concrete or broken shards of glass. Throughout his work, McFarland explores a deep interest in the relationship between truth and falsity in the photographic image.
McFarland’s solo exhibitions include San Francisco International Airport Museum, SF Camerawork in San Francisco, White Columns in New York, and Stephen Wirtz Gallery in San Francisco. Group exhibitions include Richard L. Nelson Gallery at the University of California, Davis, Aperture in New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and Kala Art Institute in Berkeley. McFarland has been the recipient of numerous wards, grants, and fellowships including The Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation, Headlands Center for the Arts Artist-in-Residence, John Gutman Photography Fellowship, Maum Award for Emerging American Photographers, Phelan Art Award in Photography, and a Fellowship with the National Photography Institute at Columbia University.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Whitney Museum of American Art Library
Milwaukee Art Museum
Oakland Museum
Humboldt State University
University of California Davis
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive