https://www.terriloewenthal.com/work daily 1.0 2025-12-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/562f00b8e4b0c7b6ee95bda3/1694638851663-P4CMH1DW10X4U83MBS8F/TerriLoewenthal_2023_CinnamonPeak.jpg WORK - Cinnamon Peak (Ute land), 2023 Archival Pigment Print 30 x 40 inches - Edition of 3 + 2AP 42 x 56 inches - Edition of 3 + 2AP CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, San Francisco, CA, 2023 Mountain Goat Mountain Press Release CULT Aimee Friberg is honored to announce Terri Loewenthal’s second solo exhibition with the gallery: Mountain Goat Mountain. This exhibition presents new photographs made over the last two years during Loewenthal’s trips throughout wilderness ranges in Montana, Wyoming and Colorado. Mountain Goat Mountain opens on September 15th and runs through November 4th, 2023. There will be an artist reception open to the public on Saturday, September 16 from 6 to 8 pm in CULT’s San Francisco location (1401 16th Street). This new body of work is a further evolution of Loewenthal’s initial reckoning with the impact of Manifest Destiny and her perspective on the West as a female photographer. In this time of drastic impacts to the climate and our planet, Loewenthal pushed herself, both deeper into the remote landscape and deeper into her process. Using new techniques and handmade tools, she offers her audience the opportunity to look beyond the sublime into a space where awe culminates in a sense of connection and whole-ness, celebrating what it means to be a human in nature. Loewenthal continues to create photographs using her tool kit of lenses and filters, with which she builds a unique optical construction for each image in front of the camera lens. When Loewenthal looks through her viewfinder, the image she sees is the same image the audience sees on the wall. Of the process, she says that these are “not ’made-up’ images, but rather ones that reflect the truth of countless multiplicities: the human capacity for intimacy with land; our connection to a reality that is not merely factual but also arises from emotion and imagination; and our longing for wild, transformative experiences within and without the psyche.” In this new body of work, Loewenthal digs into the push and pull of the fantastical, grounding the photographs in actuality by emphasizing subtle realistic moments, while simultaneously allowing the horizon to play with the prismatic, otherworldly reflections that she constructs in her camera. Copper Lakes is a mind-bending image that captures the tension between a landscape that is recognizable, and her optics. Loewenthal bends the light bouncing off the lake, making it brighter and more visible. When Loewenthal sets out with her tools to work, she is doing so to show the complex and dynamic nature of relationship to the world around us – not as an explorer, but as a reveler in the complex and invigorating places she is privileged to visit. The creation of each image is an act of commitment and devotion for Loewenthal. Her time, her physical abilities, her mental facilities, and her acute human senses are all employed in their entirety during her photographic treks. In her Summer of 2021 trip to Montana and Wyoming, Loewenthal journeyed to the most remote areas of her career to date. She traveled from outside of Helena down to Yellowstone, through country rarely walked today but previously cared for and lived on by many indigenous tribes: Crow, Blackfoot, Sioux, Umatilla, Walla Walla, Cheyenne, Salish, Eastern Shoshone, Cayuse. In order to capture Copper Lakes, west of Yellowstone and looking up to Stinkingwater Peak, Loewenthal, hiked 45 degrees up a mountain with all of her gear on her back, crouching and sliding on shale, following a barely used trail from her campsite before dawn, and arriving at an alpine lake right when the sun was directly overhead. She says that she often reaches her destination at this hour, when the light is considered too intense and not optimal for traditional landscape photography. To counter this, in her composition, Loewenthal customizes the colors and manipulates the bright sun in an attempt to capture the unseen. Her images are not solely based on the light, but on where she stands and how she feels. The lake and the mountains are clear, edges layered with flashes of white, and a rainbow of surreal color radiates from the left. Like the iris of the eye, the image transports the viewer directly into the wonder of being out in the wilderness. Loewenthal’s photographs radiate elation, inviting her audience to share in the feeling of joy and awe. Originally from Florida, and having lived in Northern California for the majority of her adult life, Loewenthal has experienced a range of environments where weather can be extreme, but the pattern of the four seasons is famously temperate. After taking her only child to college in September of 2022, Loewenthal immersed herself in the forests of Colorado to experience the transition of time — planetarily, geologically, and personally — alongside the changing autumnal leaves. One of the four photographs from her time in Colorado, Cinnamon Peak, was taken during her hike from Crested Butte to Aspen. Hiking through land once occupied by the Ute, Loewenthal turned her camera not only to the Rocky Mountains, the great spine of our continent, but to the groves and forests that blanket the terrain. In these works, Loewenthal challenges our perspective, reflecting on stewardship and care. The leaves of the Aspens we see in Kebler Pass and Horse Ranch Camp will turn gold and fall, their silvery branches will lay bare, and then green will grow again. The cycle is in sync with the turning of the earth and the passage of the sun through the sky. The macro and the micro are equally present depending on where the viewer focuses in these transcendent photographs, a visual manifestation of the detail and the vista. As stewards of the land we must guide with a gentle hand, know when to intervene and when to take a step back, like the tender touch and patient guidance a parent gives to their child. Loewenthal describes herself as an “astronaut of the human experience.” Her work addresses the parts of our lives and our world that are difficult to process by not only giving us the aerial view, but also a front row seat, to the ethereal. The photographs in Mountain Goat Mountain are a reminder of our temporary existence on this planet, of the trees that have been growing and the mountains that were formed long before we were here. Loewenthal’s feminist vision of the sublime does not wish to interfere with the otherness of the awesome. Instead, it seeks to look beyond the metaphors of the sacred and the holy, to create a closer connection with our appreciation of Earth’s beauty. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/562f00b8e4b0c7b6ee95bda3/1722300987473-ID3E1Q2W0630IB15IT4K/TerriLoewenthal_MaroonBells_2025.jpg WORK https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/562f00b8e4b0c7b6ee95bda3/1736227741856-HQL0SMI5552I419THEZG/TerriLoewenthal_CreatureComfort04%28EchoLake%2CCA%292019_landingPage.jpg WORK https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/562f00b8e4b0c7b6ee95bda3/1631291811134-6FO45YJDZW4OIWB5QWKG/02_TerriLoewenthal_AztecAmphitheater_2020.jpg WORK https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/562f00b8e4b0c7b6ee95bda3/1674875815999-FMOGLR9A7WXT8Y2V7PUO/TerriLoewenthal_Psychscape157%28OurLakeMT%292021.jpg WORK https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/562f00b8e4b0c7b6ee95bda3/1602871732364-TJGJQ2QV1ZXVPPWJC0H5/TerriLoewenthal_Psychscape71%28IkesBackbone%2CAZ%292018.jpg WORK - Psychscape 71 (Ike's Backbone, AZ), 2018 Archival Pigment Print 30 x 40 inches - Edition of 3 + 2AP 42 x 56 inches - Edition of 3 + 2AP Sarah Shepard Gallery 2021, Larkspur, CA Psychscapes Artist Statement I was referring to these images as psychedelic even before I made them. To have a psychedelic experience is to free your mind from its normal constraints. When I had the idea for these images, I was able to shift the colors of the natural world in my mind. Water was pink and leaves were blue. I’ve always been envious of painters’ ability to shift reality in whichever direction they choose. With this work, I wanted to do something similar: create a world that is familiar yet also wild, otherworldly. My work is a marriage of calculation and spontaneity. I have a toolkit and a sense of what might happen, but at the same time, it’s a surprise. I love the idea of making an “impossible” image. I discover my photographs by distorting, filtering and reconstructing the natural world around me, in real time. During the process, nothing looks right until suddenly, it all feels exactly right. This moment of emotional clarity is what I consider sublime. We can all recognize that moment of absolute personal truth when feel it, even if we can’t explain why – it's the certainty of "something better" that we all carry within ourselves. I hope my work will help preserve the wildness of our open spaces — by heightening and newly envisioning that wildness. I intend to present an understanding of the natural world that extends beyond its economic and recreational value, illuminating possibilities of transcendence, renewal and hope. I once read an article about Yosemite in Time (2005), a book that came out of Rebecca Solnit's trips with photographers Byron Wolfe and Mark Klett to rephotograph sites originally photographed by Ansel Adams. Klett said, “What we saw in the Adams photographs is: This is nature. And it’s beautiful because you’re not there.” That’s such a contrast to my work. I’m extending an invitation, not to view untouchable, pristine places from a distance, but rather to step inside and move beyond the confines of our everyday perceptions. In each of my images there’s a possibility, a story of what could never really happen, but then it did. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/562f00b8e4b0c7b6ee95bda3/1743030918136-JZXK1B2T72XR291ML434/TerriLoewenthal_steepRavineBeach_2025.jpg WORK - Steep Ravine Beach (Coast Miwok land), 2025 Archival pigment print 30 × 40 inches - Edition of 3 +2AP 42 × 56 inches - Edition of 3 +2AP Bolinas Museum Mt. Tam Artist Statement May we all find a Bay Mountain that gives us a crystal moment of being and a breath of the sky, and only asks us to hold the whole world dear. – Gary Snyder This is the first time I’ve made a body of work at home. A landscape photographer is accustomed to being out there. With Mt. Tamalpais, out there is right here. Our beautiful Bay Mountain is always in view, rising from the Pacific and falling into the bay, but up close it is many different things. You can feel tiny amidst the dense and looming redwoods. You can gain perspective above the clouds. To make this work, I look for pockets of time to be alone on the mountain, mid-week and off-season, when I can sit and be present to the elements. Like any photographer, I watch the light as it plays across the land, backlighting the edge of a moss-covered tree or illuminating a distant yellow field. For me, representational imagery of any single view fails to convey the full-bodied experience of nature. Heightening the experience of it through color comes closer to the truth. I discover my photographs by distorting, filtering and reconstructing the natural world around me, in real time. During the process, everything looks wrong until, suddenly, it all feels exactly right. Creating work on Mt. Tam might be the closest thing to a studio practice I have ever known. Remote wilderness is poised, in its otherworldliness, to offer perspective. Here at the edge of the Bay, dropping into the state of mind where I make my work is a bit closer, more accessible. Just like that, I can leave the unanswered messages and half-finished chores and disappear into nature. But proximity is its own challenge. The distractions of city life are magnetic. And then there’s the fog! The weather on Mt. Tam amplifies its mystery. Countless times, I have filled my bag with a day’s worth of heavy glass and set out before dawn, only to find a fog that will not lift or burn away. What’s the worst thing that happens? I take a lovely walk: a practice in itself. My head clears. My imagination wanders into meditative emptiness. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to shake the illusion that I am separate from what’s around me. That shift is the subject of these images. There’s one spot on the Bolinas Ridge that I’ve come to know. Elsa Gidlow could be describing it: “It is like a journey to space to walk there, to begin in dense fog and climb above it to see what was dark and grey below spread out brilliantly white in the sunshine.” Returning time and again to that same cliff, I think of what Etel Adnan, for whom Mt. Tam long served as a muse, wrote of time spent on the mountain: "I am left with the sort of wonder that the sense of eternity always carries with it.” Which is maybe only to say, it feels like home. https://www.terriloewenthal.com/bio daily 0.75 2025-02-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/562f00b8e4b0c7b6ee95bda3/1605037033622-ZBO88M1QOKD6NM1T6LEU/TerriLoewenthal_byEricPersha_2020.jpg BIO Photo by Eric Persha https://www.terriloewenthal.com/bibliography daily 0.75 2025-02-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/562f00b8e4b0c7b6ee95bda3/1594257646167-LCMDGLAYCQHV0UYWQM88/Pf_July2020 BIBLIOGRAPHY https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/562f00b8e4b0c7b6ee95bda3/1580869990948-08SQMSPYEBPHPUDK9NEV/l%27obs.png BIBLIOGRAPHY https://www.terriloewenthal.com/contact daily 0.75 2023-07-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/562f00b8e4b0c7b6ee95bda3/1454541191204-80MXM9V0GTZHE585DJOP/image-asset.jpeg CONTACT