Klett, Mark. View Finder: Mark Klett, Photography, and the Reinvention of Landscape by William L. Fox.

University of New Mexico, 2001. 1st edition in wraps, as new in shrink wrap. [Western United States; Landscape; Timothy O’Sullivan; Kyle Bajakian; Ansel Adams; Robert Adams; Edward Weston; Byron Wolfe; William Henry Jackson] ISBN 0-8263-2220-4. Issued at $34.95.  Summary:

View Finder: Mark Klett, Photography, and the Reinvention of Landscape (published in 2001 by the University of New Mexico Press) is a comprehensive, 309-page critical study, biography, and travelogue by acclaimed writer, poet, and cultural geographer William L. Fox. The book offers a multi-layered exploration of the evolution of American Western landscape photography, using the career and field methodologies of contemporary photographer Mark Klett as its central narrative axis.

Core Themes and Content

• The Travelogue Narrative: Structurally, the book operates as a real-time travel journal tracking Fox's journeys into the Great Basin and Nevada deserts alongside Klett and his field crew during the late 1990s. This firsthand narrative provides an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at the exhaustive physical and logistical labor required to execute precise field photography in harsh desert terrains.

• The Rephotographic Survey Movements: A primary focus of the text is Klett’s monumental work with repeat photography. Fox details Klett's role as the head of the Rephotographic Survey Project (RSP) in the late 1970s, which located and re-shot the exact desert coordinates captured by 19th-century government survey masters, as well as Klett's subsequent "Third View" project, which layered an additional generation of time onto those same changing vistas.

• A History of Spatial Perception: Fox uses Klett’s work to construct a broader historical overview of how the American West has been visually engineered. The text traces a direct lineage from the objective, geological survey work of pioneers like Timothy O'Sullivan and William Henry Jackson, through the romanticized, pristine national park mythologies of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, to the altered, human-impacted realities captured by New Topographics icons like Robert Adams.

• Time as a Photographic Dimension: A core philosophical thesis of the book is how rephotography shifts the medium away from frozen, instantaneous moments into a dynamic recording of deep time. Fox illustrates how Klett’s work exposes human intervention, ecological erosion, and municipal expansion, transforming the landscape from a passive background into an evolving, historical document.

By weaving together field notes, art history, and biographical analysis, View Finder serves as an indispensable text for understanding how the myth of the American West was constructed, challenging viewers to look past the illusion of the untouched wilderness to see the layered footprints of human history.

Mark Klett (born 1952) is an acclaimed American landscape photographer, author, and educator renowned for his innovative approach to capturing the intersection of history, geography, and the passage of time in the American West. Born in Albany, New York, Klett initially pursued a background in the sciences, earning a BS in geology from St. Lawrence University in 1974 before turning fully to visual art and completing an MFA in photography from the Visual Studies Workshop in 1977. His unique scientific background fundamentally shaped his photographic practice, leading him to serve as the chief photographer for the groundbreaking Rephotographic Survey Project (RSP) in the late 1970s and later directing the "Third View" project. Through these collaborative endeavors, Klett pioneered precise methodologies for "rephotography"—locating the exact 19th-century tripod coordinates of frontier photographers like Timothy O'Sullivan to re-photograph the changing vistas across decades. Over his prolific career, he has authored or co-authored nearly twenty books, including Seeing Time: Forty Years of Photographs, and dedicated decades to academia as a Regents' Professor of Art at Arizona State University. Awarded prestigious fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Klett’s conceptually rigorous, dual-perspective images are held in over eighty permanent museum collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the National Gallery of Art, cementing his legacy as a vital re-inventor of the landscape tradition.