Viewings

Are You Cursed If You Steal Rocks From the Petrified Forest?

A Photographer Ponders Beauty, Truth, and the Guilt of Visitors Who Pilfer Souvenirs From the Arizona National Park

In 2011, I was traveling in Arizona photographing meteorites and the misidentified meteorites known as “meteor-wrongs.” My work with the meteor-wrongs went quicker than expected and my wife and I saw the Petrified Forest National Park wasn’t far away, so we took a day trip out that way. And that’s where I stumbled onto a display of these letters, written by people who’d taken petrified rocks from the park but then wanted to send them back.

I was blown away by the letters. They were at turns heartbreaking and hilarious. People …

by Ryan Thompson |

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Art of the American Kitchen

Anisa Makhoul trained as a printmaker at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and turned to illustration after living in Amsterdam, where she bought her first set of gouache paints. …

Excavating the Future City

Through His Camera, Naoya Hatakeyama Reimagines and Rebuilds Our Human Environment

Japanese photographer Naoya Hatakeyama, who was born in Japan in 1958, has spent decades exploring and documenting the human-made environment, with a particular emphasis on cities. He has explored everywhere …

Why Do So Many Public Buildings in the U.S. Look Like Greek Temples?

In the Architectural Void of a New Nation, William Strickland Borrowed from Ancient Athens to Express America’s Democratic Ethos

by Robert Russell |

President Andrew Jackson took a keen interest in the construction of the federal mint in Philadelphia, a grand, columned edifice, inspired by the temples of ancient Greece, that opened in 1833. Jackson was not a man …

Picturing Nature’s Ultimate Survivalists

Martha Rich lived the typical suburban life until she followed her husband to Los Angeles where her average American life unraveled. To cope with divorce, fate led her to a class …

The Weathered Tobacco Barns and Oyster Shucking Houses of St. Mary’s

In Maryland’s Mother County, the Past Endures Amid Rapid Change

by Merideth M. Taylor |

In 1634, 27 years after English colonists landed at Jamestown, a group of entrepreneurs and adventurers led by Leonard Calvert, son of the 1st Lord Baltimore, sailed forth on the …


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