Niagara Falls

John Snyder’s bird’s-eye view of a moonlit Niagara Falls is at once familiar and eerily enigmatic. Painted from memory in a limited color range of blacks, grays, and whites, the river landscape is devoid of manmade structures and human activity, as if the scene visualized the primordial ancestor of today’s falls. Snyder’s painting functions much like a religious icon, but instead of a holy entity, it features the venerated scenic wonder familiar to generations of tourists and newlyweds. Drawing on the visual language of folk art, Snyder formulated his landscape in a boldly graphic style that simplifies form and distorts pictorial perspective. This visual treatment, together with the landscape’s kitschy glitter border, further emphasizes its emblematic function as a traveler's momento.