Autry National Center

Location/Dates:

Museum of the American West at Griffith Park
September 25, 2009 - January 3, 2010

The Autry National Center invites visitors to view the majestic Grand Canyon through large-scale, sweeping panoramas that marry 21st-century color photographs with historic drawings and images. Charting the Canyon: Photographs by Mark Klett & Byron Wolfe explores this celebrated place of dramatic beauty, featuring the vivid colors, breathtaking vistas, and jaw-dropping canyon depths that have lured photographers to Northern Arizona for years. The canyon is perhaps the world's best "photo op," as it is not only a national park and international tourist attraction but also a natural wonder and sacred ground.

In 2007, Mark Klett, a Regents Professor at Arizona State University, and Byron Wolfe, a former student of Klett's and now a Lantis University Professor at California State University at Chico, headed to the Grand Canyon to re-envision the many images made at the site over the past 150 years. During two summers of fieldwork, they identified the exact locations portrayed in early photographs and drawings. From those geographic points they created new photographs that incorporate the original view. Digital versions of the historic images are inserted within the contemporary photograph, creating combined images that convey the big picture surrounding the earlier artists' depicted view.