Victoria Sambunaris

January 5 - February 18, 2023
  • Victoria Sambunaris
    Untitled (rider), Joshua Tree, CA, 2021
    Chromogenic print
    39 x 55 inches
    edition of 5
    $14,000.00
  • Victoria Sambunaris creates large-scale photographs of the American West that examine the intersections of modern civilization and the natural environment. Highly detailed and carefully composed, her images present a visually refined portrait of a vast industrial terrain embedded within the high desert, grassy plains and estuarial corridors of the country.  Combining in-depth planning and research with a laborious mode of shooting and developing, sometimes waiting days for the right conditions, through her photographs Sambunaris conveys a deeply layered sense of place and a nuanced view of the complex issues surrounding American land use and management.

    Inspired by the intrepid nineteenth century photographers whose work helped to define our understanding of the region, Sambunaris embarks upon an extended, solitary road trip each year, capturing the American landscape with a large format, five-by-seven wooden field camera. From 2009 to 2012, Sambunaris covered the two thousand mile border between the United States and Mexico in an attempt to understand the essence of the border culture and the divided landscape. Subsequently, from 2012 To 2016 she researched and documented the infrastructure and ecological implications of the energy industry in South Texas; and, from 2016 through 2018, Sambunaris focused her attention on the interrelationship of commercial and residential development, industry and geology throughout Utah.

     

    For her newest body of work, High and Dry, Sambunaris made three cross-country trips between 2020 and 2021 to Death Valley, the Mojave Desert and the Great Basin Desert, to investigate the relentless human activity found in the arid and supposedly barren California desert. work questions traditional and clichéd notions of landscape, our place within it, and our collective roles and responsibilities in shaping it. There she discovered dune buggies and motorcycles, campers and miners, caravans and freight trains. The resulting photographs question traditional and cliched notions of landscape, our place within it and our collective roles in shaping it. 

     

    • Victoria Sambunaris Untitled (jump), Glamis, CA, 2020 Chromogenic print 39 x 55 inches edition of 5
      Victoria Sambunaris
      Untitled (jump), Glamis, CA, 2020
      Chromogenic print
      39 x 55 inches
      edition of 5
      $14,000.00
      View more details
    • Victoria Sambunaris Untitled (Zabriskie Point), Death Valley National Park, CA, 2021 Chromogenic print 39 x 55 inches edition of 5
      Victoria Sambunaris
      Untitled (Zabriskie Point), Death Valley National Park, CA, 2021
      Chromogenic print
      39 x 55 inches
      edition of 5
      $14,000.00
      View more details
    • Victoria Sambunaris Untitled (caravan), Joshua Tree, CA, 2021 Chromogenic print 39 x 55 inches edition of 5
      Victoria Sambunaris
      Untitled (caravan), Joshua Tree, CA, 2021
      Chromogenic print
      39 x 55 inches
      edition of 5
      $14,000.00
      View more details
    • Victoria Sambunaris Untitled (red car), Searles Valley, CA, 2020 Chromogenic print 39 x 55 inches edition of 5
      Victoria Sambunaris
      Untitled (red car), Searles Valley, CA, 2020
      Chromogenic print
      39 x 55 inches
      edition of 5
      $14,000.00
      View more details
  • “I’ve been on the road over 22 years, working mostly in the American West and looking at how we inhabit landscape and what we do to landscape; how we manipulate it and change it. I go out on the road for 3 or 4 months at a time. Once I get to the area where I want to work, it’s never really so specific what I’m looking for. I’m in search of something, most of my time is searching and looking and looking and looking and I never quite know what it is, but I know I’ll know it when I see it."

    - Victoria Sambunaris

  • Victoria Sambunaris
    Untitled (Dune buggy), All American Canal, CA, 2021
    Chromogenic print
    55 x 77 inches
    edition of 3
    $20,000.00
  • Victoria Sambunaris
    Untitled (Badwater Basin from Dante's View), Death Valley National Park, CA, 2021
    Chromogenic print
    55 x 77 inches
    edition of 3
    $20,000.00
    • Victoria Sambunaris Untitled (Lucin Cutoff), Great Salt Lake, Utah, 2019 Chromogenic Print 39 x 55 inches Edition of 5
      Victoria Sambunaris
      Untitled (Lucin Cutoff), Great Salt Lake, Utah, 2019
      Chromogenic Print
      39 x 55 inches
      Edition of 5
      $14,000.00
      View more details
    • Victoria Sambunaris Untitled (Houses), Wendover, Utah, 2007 Chromogenic Print 55 x 77 inches Edition of 3
      Victoria Sambunaris
      Untitled (Houses), Wendover, Utah, 2007
      Chromogenic Print
      55 x 77 inches
      Edition of 3
      $20,000.00
      View more details
    • Victoria Sambunaris Untitled (Night Train), Galveston, Texas, 2015 Chromogenic Print 55 x 77 inches Edition of 3
      Victoria Sambunaris
      Untitled (Night Train), Galveston, Texas, 2015
      Chromogenic Print
      55 x 77 inches
      Edition of 3
      $20,000.00
      View more details
    • Victoria Sambunaris Untitled (Housing Development), Draper, Utah, 2017 Chromogenic Print 39 x 55 inches Edition of 5
      Victoria Sambunaris
      Untitled (Housing Development), Draper, Utah, 2017
      Chromogenic Print
      39 x 55 inches
      Edition of 5
      $14,000.00
      View more details
    • Victoria Sambunaris Untitled (Hercules Gap), Ely, Nevada, 2004 Chromogenic Print 39 x 55 inches Edition of 5
      Victoria Sambunaris
      Untitled (Hercules Gap), Ely, Nevada, 2004
      Chromogenic Print
      39 x 55 inches
      Edition of 5
      $14,000.00
      View more details
    • Victoria Sambunaris Untitled (Haleakala crater, with ground), Maui, Hawaii, 2005 Chromogenic Print 39 x 55 inches Edition of 5
      Victoria Sambunaris
      Untitled (Haleakala crater, with ground), Maui, Hawaii, 2005
      Chromogenic Print
      39 x 55 inches
      Edition of 5
      $14,000.00
      View more details
  • Victoria Sambunaris
    Untitled (The Bowl in Bahia Grande), Brownsville, Texas, 2015
    Chromogenic Print
    30 x 84 inches
    Edition of 5
    $15,000.00
  • Victoria Sambunaris
    Untitled (Moving container train), Marfa, Texas, 2002
    Chromogenic Print
    39 x 55 inches
    Edition of 5
    • Victoria Sambunaris Untitled (Evaporation Pool), Moab, Utah, 2017 Chromogenic Print 39 x 55 inches Edition of 5
      Victoria Sambunaris
      Untitled (Evaporation Pool), Moab, Utah, 2017
      Chromogenic Print
      39 x 55 inches
      Edition of 5
      $14,000.00
    • Victoria Sambunaris Untitled (Caverns, Luray, Virginia), 2006 Chromogenic Print 39 x 55 inches Edition of 5
      Victoria Sambunaris
      Untitled (Caverns, Luray, Virginia), 2006
      Chromogenic Print
      39 x 55 inches
      Edition of 5
      $14,000.00
    • Victoria Sambunaris Untitled (train line), Cedar Point, Colorado, 2002 Chromogenic Print 55 x 77 inches Edition of 3
      Victoria Sambunaris
      Untitled (train line), Cedar Point, Colorado, 2002
      Chromogenic Print
      55 x 77 inches
      Edition of 3
      $20,000.00
    • Victoria Sambunaris Untitled (Border view south from grasslands), Hereford, Arizona, 2010 Chromogenic Print 55 x 77 inches Edition of 3
      Victoria Sambunaris
      Untitled (Border view south from grasslands), Hereford, Arizona, 2010
      Chromogenic Print
      55 x 77 inches
      Edition of 3
      $20,000.00
    • Victoria Sambunaris Untitled (Train tracks), Port Lavaca, Texas, 2015 Chromogenic Print 39 x 55 inches Edition of 5
      Victoria Sambunaris
      Untitled (Train tracks), Port Lavaca, Texas, 2015
      Chromogenic Print
      39 x 55 inches
      Edition of 5
      $14,000.00
    • Victoria Sambunaris Untitled (Intercoastal waterway with red barge), Bolivar Peninsula, Texas, 2015 Chromogenic Print 39 x 55 inches Edition of 5
      Victoria Sambunaris
      Untitled (Intercoastal waterway with red barge), Bolivar Peninsula, Texas, 2015
      Chromogenic Print
      39 x 55 inches
      Edition of 5
      $14,000.00
  • Victoria Sambunaris
    Untitled (Gravel Pit), Near Draper, Utah, 2017
    Chromogenic Print
    39 x 55 inches
    Edition of 5
    $14,000.00
  • Victoria Sambunaris was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1964, and lives and works in New York. She received a BA from Mount Vernon College in 1986 and an MFA from Yale University School of Art in 1999, where she has since held various teaching positions. She is the receipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the Anonymous Was a Woman Award and an Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship Grant. In 2011, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery presented a mid-career retrospective of her work which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago and the Nevada Museum of Art. From October 30, 2020 - May 1, 2021, the Brigham Young University Museum of Art will present Far Out: The West Re-Seen, a major restrospective of Sambunaris' work bringing together over forty works from throughout her career.

     

    Sambunaris' work can be seen in numerous public collections throughout the United States, including those of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Her monograph, Taxonomy of a Landscape, published by Radius Books, presents a ten year survey of her work.