LANDMARKS
FOMA Gallery
August 29 – September 26

An exhibition of aerial photography capturing the iconic landscapes of the Four Corners region, on view from August 29 through September 26, 2026, at FOMA Gallery, 333 Montezuma Avenue, Santa Fe, NM.

This remarkable collection showcases breathtaking perspectives of legendary natural sites across Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Featuring dramatic images of Comb Ridge, Monument Valley, Glen Canyon, the Henry Mountains, Factory Butte, Waterpocket Fold, San Rafael Swell, and more, LANDMARKS reflects the vast and varied terrain that defines this storied region. Grant Johnson’s photographs are deeply informed by his twenty year career with The Nature Conservancy and the environmental writings of Edward Abbey, whose reflections on the American Southwest in works such as Desert Solitaire have inspired reverence for these landscapes. His images invite viewers to witness the Four Corner’s remarkable topography from an unparalleled aerial perspective of shifting altitudes and seasonal moods.

Spanning a career of over fifty years, the exhibition offers a unique and immersive journey through time and space, revealing subtle changes in light, weather, and terrain that celebrate both the beauty and fragility of these iconic landmarks.

In 1972, the year I graduated from the University of Arizona, NASA’s Landsat program went public. The stunning, satellite images telemetered back to earth from space convinced me that the future of image making was electronic.  I wanted to learn about that technology because it presented a whole new spectrum of visual possibilities.  I was accepted as a graduate student in the Rhode Island School of Design, Experimental Video program and, in 1975 received the first MFA in that discipline. 

By 1980 I’d moved to San Francisco and was doing video art, commercial TV production and admiring the remotely sensed planetary landscapes from NASA.  I embarked on an independent documentary project showcasing the electronic imaging progress to date, which sought to depict natural phenomena, like landscape, using analog and digital computers.  I entitled the project The Art and Science of Landscape Depiction and chose, as the model landscape, the Four Corners Region of the American southwest, particularly the Grand Canyon, for it’s dramatic topography.  I interviewed practitioners and innovators of this technology in an effort to understand how the various applications of technology worked and produced results.

A rough cut of this project, which I could never raise enough money to complete, is posted on my YouTube channel.  It features interviews with some very interesting people who pioneered the technology in common use today.  During the course of collecting material for the project, I worked with various organizations engaged in producing cutting-edge imaging technology like International Imaging Systems. They produced room-sized image processing systems for foreign governments to process remotely sensed images of various types, satellite imaging being just one.

During the course of producing a video program, The Future of Exploration (also posted on my YouTube Channel) promoting their image processing System 75, my co-worker handed me a book and said “you’re interested in the desert southwest, you should read this.”  It was Desert Solitaire by Edward Abby. 

I read it and then read everything Ed Abby had written to that time, and everything he wrote from then on, until he died, and then everything I could find, that was written about him afterwards.  It captivated me in a way I’d never been possessed before and I wanted to see, visit and experience the places he wrote about and have spent many years since, doing that.

Abby enlightened me about the landscape, the cultures, the economics and the environmental issues that exist in the southwest from water, to ranching, to cultural inequality and immigration.  He personified some of the contradictions that define the American colonization mentality and the abuse that has been institutionalized over our history.  The aspect of Abby’s work that influenced me the most however, was his perception of nature, the landscape and how he wrote about it. 

I never completed The Art and Science of Landscape Depiction but I embraced a lifelong obsession with the desert southwest and have spent the better part of my lifetime exploring it’s wonders and harboring a never-ending fascination with the terrain and the people.  LANDMARKS is a show of the expeditions I have made to learn about this region, it’s geology, terrain and it’s history.

Grant Johnson

August 2026