The Blue Lagoon, Geothermal Pumping Station, Iceland

Virginia Beahan, artist

born 1946

Laura McPhee, artist

born 1958

The Blue Lagoon, Geothermal Pumping Station, Iceland, 1988

Portfolio/Series title: No Ordinary Land

Where object was made: Svartsengi Geothermal Power Plant, Grindavik, Iceland

Material/technique: chromogenic color print

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 76.2 x 101.6 cm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 30 x 40 in
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 76.2 x 101.6 cm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 30 x 40 in
Frame Dimensions (Height x Width x Depth): 41 1/4 x 48 x 1 in
Weight (Weight): 26 lbs

Credit line: Museum purchase: Museum of Art Acquisition Fund

Accession number: 2000.0006

Not on display

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Label texts

Exhibition Label:
"Contemporary Photographs: Rethinking the Genres," Oct-2000, Rachel Epp Buller
Throughout their long-running artistic collaboration, Beahan and McPhee have focused on landscape subjects. They have traveled to remote jungles and active volcanoes, always in search of landscapes that reveal extreme intersections of humanity and nature. The Blue Lagoon illustrates the encroachment of human industrial activity on a remote landscape in Iceland. In spite of their benign geothermal function, the sight of smokestacks immediately adjacent to a lake for swimming may elicit a momentary panic in the viewer, wondering if nature is at risk from human industry.

Exhibition Label:
"1 December, 1999 Curatorial Meeting Show," Dec-1999, John Pultz and others
Over twenty years ago I met Virginia Beahan and Laura McPhee when they were beginning photographers and fellow students in a history of photography course. In the intervening years, Virginia and Laura have developed an intense friendship and working relationship. They have traveled the world to collaborate on photographs that observe humankind's relationship to the natural environment. Working with an antique view camera, which uses 8 x 10 inch film, they take turns under the focusing cloth, commenting back and forth on content and composition.
Last summer, on an art-buying trip with me to New York, two Spencer Museum's colleagues saw and like these photographs. This convinced me that the photographs' quality and not my friendship propelled me to acquire them. I bought one for the museum; the photographers offered the second as a gift.