Winner of Photography Catalogue of the Year at the 2022 Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards

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Devour the Land considers how contemporary photographers have responded to the U.S. military’s impact on the domestic environment since the 1970s, a dynamic period for environmental activism as well as for photography. This catalogue presents a lively range of voices at the intersection of art, environmentalism, militarism, photography, and politics. Alongside interviews with prominent contemporary artists working in the landscape photography tradition, the images speak to photographers’ varied motivations, personal experiences, and artistic approaches. The result is a surprising picture of the ways violence and warfare surround us. Although most modern combat has taken place abroad, the U.S. domestic landscape bears the footprint of armed conflict—much of the environmental damage we live with today was caused by our own military and the expansive network of industries supporting its work. Designed to evoke a field book and to nod toward ephemera produced by earlier artists and activists, the catalogue features works by dozens of photographers, including Ansel Adams, Robert Adams, Dorothy Marder, Alex Webb, Terry Evans, and many more.

Makeda Best is the Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at the Harvard Art Museums.

With contributions by Makeda Best, Steven Hoelscher, Abrahm Lustgarten, Courtney J. Martin, Katherine Mintie, and Will Wilson. Also includes interviews with artists Sheila Pree Bright, Terry Evans, Ashley Gilbertson, David T. Hanson, Stacy Kranitz, Jin Lee, Richard Misrach, Barbara Norfleet, and Oscar Palacio, as well as poems by Ed Roberson from his collection To See the Earth Before the End of the World (2010).