Mimi Plumb

Mimi Plumb's Landfall encapsulates the anxieties of a world spinning out of balance, a mirror-land eerily reminiscent of our own time. The burnt-out remains of a house fire open out onto equally decimated alpine landscapes, group shots of humans in lackadaisical embrace with high tech weapons of war... Plumb's photographs of manmade scars and refuse mingle in seductive rhythm with portraits of friends and strangers in disquieting poses, reveling in the underlying unease the artist saw in herself, her community, and the world at large.

Limited edition with print.

Mimi Plumb’s The White Sky serves as a poignant visual recollection of growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1970s, capturing a period marked by post-sixties disillusionment, environmental anxiety, and suburban isolation. Embedded within Plumb’s broader oeuvre, the project bridges the gap between personal narrative and documentary photography, offering an intimate yet critical reflection on youth culture and American domestic landscape at the tail end of the post-war boom.

Aesthetically, the work relies on a stark, high-contrast black-and-white visual language that mirror the oppressive heat and blinding light suggested by the title. Plumb constructs tense, off-kilter compositions, suburban wasteland backdrop, sun-bleached hillsides, makeshift forts, and candid, vulnerable portraits of teenagers, that convey a palpable sense of boredom, restlessness, and quiet threat. The interplay between human figures and the sprawling, altered suburban landscape creates an uneasy spatial tension, framing the environment not merely as a setting, but as an active psychological force.

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Co-published with the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

“From 2021 to 2023, I photographed around two reservoirs in the Central Valley of California experiencing a twenty-three year megadrought. The Reservoir weaves together images of the drying lakes and people seeking a leisurely day at the beach. They bring their dogs, babies and baby carriages, inner tubes, kayaks, rafts, umbrellas, coolers, and tents. As the summer progresses and the waterline recedes, families walk over a mile to reach the beach. At times, the sky is colored with smoke from nearby forest fires. The photographs in The Reservoir are part of an ongoing exploration in my work of how droughts, climate change, and ever-present anxiety collectively maps onto life in the American West.” Mimi Plumb

It could be the last of our days, the way the water is receding, and the sun unrelenting. The reservoirs, once vast and overflowing, shrink before our eyes; the distance to reach the lapping shores growing vaster with every page. Humanity traveling that distance, what was once yards, now a mile or more. Mimi Plumb, in her new book, The Reservoir, follows the trail of people dotting the parched landscape, recording the plight, the pilgrimage, and the reward. The light is magical. The scenes are sublime. The moments are suspended. The sequence of images leads us to the water’s edge and lets us decide if we want to keep going or not.

Mimi Plumb is part of a long tradition of socially engaged photographers concerned with California and the West.

She received a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship in support of her current project, Reservoir.