Larkspur, California (Torn Screen), from the series "California Landscapes"

Catherine Wagner has long documented ordinary built environments to expose the hidden structures of American culture. Her earliest work recorded the rapidly changing California urban landscape of the mid-1970s, showing the highway foundations and construction sites that were then spreading across San Francisco and Oakland. Like many of her contemporaries, Wagner chose to focus on seemingly mundane facets of human-altered urban settings, marking a dramatic break from previous traditions of majestic landscape photography. Here Wagner presents for inspection a commonplace mesh screen used to shield construction zones. The synthetic material appears directly imposed on the land beyond, suggesting a drastic transformation taking place outside the photographic frame.