Terra Incognita

Long regarded as one of America's leading landscape photographers, Steve Mulligan here displays forty of his best and most evocative black-and-white photographs.

Ranging from the Garden of the Gods in Colorado to Baja's Santa Catalina Island to the Tallgrass Prairie in Kansas to the Florida Everglades, he sees through and beyond the familiar to illuminate previously unrevealed landscapes.

Terra incognita was the term used by ancient cartographers to describe those areas of the world still unexplored, landscapes of great mystery and allure, replete with the promise of discovery.

This term has always charmed me for it seems to allude to the possibilities inherent in any exploration, whether an arduous physical voyage or an intuitive mental search.

I have become convinced that everything in nature-including the most familiar and mundane of subjects-is imbued with a certain degree of mystery.

By searching out these skewed and esoteric visual enigmas, by skating the fine line between vision and abstraction, I have journeyed into my own terra incognita.--Steve Mulligan.

Crossing wide stylistic and geographic realms, the images of Terra Incognita exemplify state-of-the-art landscape photography.

The key ingredients--unabashed and unfettered love of subject, the land, the terra, and fascination with the mysteries revealed in the careless gestures of our earth--are the common denominators of all.

They depict forms and textures that I would most likely not see; they constitute, therefore, revelations.--Tom Till.