Terri Loewenthal | Psychscapes

Artist statement

The history of landscape photography is rife with men behind cameras attempting to offer the definitive view of a particular land feature. (Think of Ansel Adams’ iconic images of Half Dome and Carleton Watkins’ famous compositions of Yosemite Valley.) This kind of image-making seeks to capture, as in “possess,” an objective version of the natural world that does not (and has never) existed. As a woman seeking to reimagine the genre of landscape photography, my work overlaps multiple vantage points and shifts colors into oversaturated hues, exposing the fallacy of a single objective view and offering a rich, sublime subjectivity in its place that is faithful to the lived complexity of human-and-land interactions. Each of my images is a single-exposure, in-camera composition that utilizes special optics I developed. The result is not a “made-up” image, but rather one that reflects 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.

TERRI LOEWENTHAL EXPLORES "THE INTERSECTION OF LANDSCAPE AND PSYCHE" IN PSYCHSCAPES: "WHO WOULD I BE IN THAT PLACE?"

"Are you romanced by the work? Maybe that means you are seeking hope."

By Hannah Loesch
Museé Magazine

Terri Loewenthal is an Oakland-based artist whose recent work explores the intersection of landscape and psyche. In her new series, Psychscapes, Loewenthal investigates the sublime expanse of land and sky romanticized in the still-potent mythology of Utopian California. Psychscapes are single-exposure, in-camera compositions that utilize special optics developed by Loewenthal to compress vast spaces into complex, evocative environments. These photographs combine straightforward landscape photography with explorations into the psychology of perception.

Hannah Loesch: You describe this work as an exploration into the "intersection of landscape and psyche." What is the relationship between landscape and psyche?

Terri Loewenthal: In a way, our impression of ourselves is the most unmediated experience we have. And yet, it is wholly ephemeral. Our connection to physical places gives us a starting point for the exploration of our psyches. Because we define ourselves based on the experiences we’ve already had, we gravitate towards the familiar. Psychscapes utilize elements of actual landscapes, so they offer a comfortable first step into the unknown. They appeal to our memory of forest, mountain, stream and sky, yet we know confidently that they aren’t real – a paradox that accentuates how artificial the divide between the psyche and the external world really is.

On its own, the notion of our psyche – our understanding of ourselves – is an abstraction. It only becomes meaningful when it is forced to contend with reality. Our natural environment gives us context for this understanding. The two questions “Who am I?" and “What’s my place in the world?” must be answered together since it’s the alchemical mixing of our spirit and our place that determines what is possible. Joseph Campbell describes how tribes based in the jungle – amidst moist soil teeming with worms and tree-cover thick enough to hide the sky – believed deities were beneath them, underground, while tribes in the desert – in wide open skies – believed that heaven was above. Without consciously choosing, we come to understand our resources, both immediate and metaphysical, by being in a place. The same thing happens when we look at a picture of a place; we intuitively envision ourselves there, asking, "Who would I be in that place?"

HL: What inspired your investigation into the psychology of perception through photography?

TL: Nature has always been my refuge. When I lose the plot, I turn to open-ended walks in the hills for a reset. I am able to quiet my busy mind by immersing myself in a natural landscape, and this where all of my good ideas tend to come from. I’ve been taking pictures for a long time. When studying landscape, even before I discovered my current process, I was rarely drawn to make a literal document of nature. I’ve always been more interested in depicting the palette of a place than the place itself. The relationship between colors is endlessly fascinating to me. I’m not entirely sure when I first had the idea to shift the colors of the natural world, but I’ve been experimenting for years, attempting to find a process that works with the natural beauty that already exists. 

My desire to push the boundaries of photography is partly a reaction to the ubiquity of photographs today. I had a bout of feeling bored with making imagery and it caused a mild identity crisis. The only cure I could find was to make images that I was genuinely excited to look at, which meant they had to look completely different than anything else. I needed to deliberately engage in a process of discovery in order to deepen my relationship with what I was seeing.

HL: The dreamlike landscapes I see in your photos are so otherworldly, it’s hard to believe they come straight out of your camera, and are not created in post-production. I know you like to keep the specifics of your process under wraps, but in general, how do you do it?

TL: The process involves composing reflections of the 360 degree landscape surrounding me and using filters to shift colors. Each image is a single exposure; all of the layering and color-shifting happens optically. I like to think of these images as in-camera collages. This means that the subject for most landscape photographers – the mountains in view – becomes raw material from which I construct images that are new vistas altogether. The images are not a document of where the camera was pointed. Shifting colors completely unmoors the image from actuality. Why does ambiguity have to be relegated to dreams? Being able to work with color independently from subject gives me much more control over the emotional tenor of the images. Changing color changes everything. 

My work is a marriage of calculation and spontaneity. I have a toolkit and I have a sense of what might happen, but at the same time, it’s a surprise. It’s almost like popping a periscope up from a submarine, only once I pan past one view I can never pan back to see the same thing; it will have shifted to something new by then. What actually happens is the product of a playful moment. I know the conditions that make good Psychscapes, but I never know exactly what image I’ll see when I put my eye to the viewfinder.

Since the images are made on-location, it’s as much about the experience as it is about the photograph. There’s an altered state of mind that comes from leaving the city behind, and that’s definitely part of it. The fact that I don’t know what I’m going to get keeps me excited. There are so many natural factors beyond my control during a session – the cloud cover, the angle of the sun, the precipitation in the air – and all of these things affect what I’m able to produce. Not only do I not know what the image is ahead of time, but even as I’m doing it, it’s fleeting. If I don’t take the picture the moment the magic happens, I lose it and can’t remake it. 

HL: In Psychscapes, you investigate the expanse of land and sky romanticized in the mythology of Utopian California. Other than the fact that you are a native to the state, why California?

TL: California is a natural starting place. Not only is this the place where I fell in love with photography, it’s the place where I’ve found my people – people who care more about creativity, social justice, and community-building than paying homage to the crumbling paradigms of what we “should” do with our lives. In California, I feel encouraged to explore ideas that don’t spring from what I’ve been taught or shown, to trust myself. Here, people start at “yes,” and this encourages the open-mindedness necessary to indulge impossible ideas. 

I am interested in creating Psychscapes in new terrain, but I would guess that the colorful aspect of my work might cause them to still read as having been made by a Californian, regardless of where they are shot. Color is a secret backdoor to our soul. Like the soundtrack to a film, color tells us how to feel. To have a psychedelic experience is to momentarily step away from the constraints your mind is normally under, and maybe the easiest way to visually suggest a hallucination is to shift something we already know (and love) to a shockingly new state. California has a long and rich history of fostering this kind of shift, and nurturing it into something beautiful.

HL: You say the mythology of Utopian California is still potent. What do you mean by that? Are utopian societies meant to be questioned? Even in your photos, do they exist?

TL: Constructing a vision of a better place is an exercise in questioning our current day. The future is our chance to address the past. We should do so with eyes open, asking questions all the way. These images are not documents, they are an invitation to have a subjective experience. The places depicted in my work do not exist, but they aren’t alien either. They look familiar and inviting. That’s because we all house a vision of a better world within ourselves, but it’s not a strictly logical construct; that’s what makes these fantastical images a few steps closer to real. Psychscapes feel like recognizably better places, but the specifics of “better” are personal. If you feel like you are seeing a better place when you see these images, than there’s evidence that you house a utopia of your own. 

HL: What is it about psychedelic colors and your special optics that makes a landscape seem sublime and utopian?

TL: I often wonder the same thing while I’m shooting. There’s a vibration that happens when certain colors are combined, an effect compounded by composition. Other art forms offer complete control over color in a way that photography, being representational, has been much more constrained. With Psychscapes, I can make color and light behave in ways they do not naturally behave. For example, I can have a wash of color emanate out from a valley or even across multiple separate features in the landscape. Color can unify composed elements, or shift the viewer’s attention, or change the apparent time of day or mood. These are all common uses of color in paintings, but to be able to use color in this way in a photograph, while many elements of the image still appear “real,” is endlessly surprising to me. 

HL: A lot of artists use photography to bring to light the often painfully real parts of the world that some would otherwise overlook. Why do you choose to romanticize instead?

TL: The moment Trump was elected my husband looked over in despair and said, “At least punk is back." My immediate reply was: “Beauty is back." Envisioning a more beautiful world encourages hope, and hope is what we need right now. While a lot of photography is a period at the end of a sentence, a document of reality, I want to offer an opening stanza. The psyche is complex, with dark nooks and crannies ultimately characterized by depth and surprise. I carve a path for the imagination to find what it will. My work is an entry point – let’s try something a bit disorienting, and see if we can’t reorient. Are you romanced by the work? Maybe that means you are seeking hope.

In our current political climate, the painfully real is front and center, so now it’s time to showcase the thing that we continually gloss over: the sublime. A mountain might be the easiest thing to overlook. Mountains are grandiose, and we have an intrinsic draw to know them, but it’s very easy to start and stop with the notion of their beauty, and not push any further. By using the landscape not as subject, but as raw material for composition, I start with something that we’ve already filed away and reconfigure it in a way that helps us move beyond simply considering it beautiful again. I use elements from the natural world to show you the rest of yourself. Remember: you are nature – body, psyche and all. What’s more hopeful than that?

About the artist.

Terri Loewenthal has exhibited at diverse venues including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco, CA), Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley, CA), San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (San Jose, CA) and Booth Western Art Museum (Cartersville, GA). Her work is included in many collections, public and private, inscluding the City of San Francisco, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, Fidelity Investments, Facebook and Instagram. She has been featured in many publications including Aperture, Harper’s and Wired. She is also founder of The Chetwood, a residency program that provides housing for artists visiting the Bay Area, allowing them to create lasting community with supportive peer networks outside of typical art-making structures. Loewenthal is a frequent collaborator with many Bay Area arts organizations including Creative Growth (Oakland, CA) and has been an active musician for over a decade; her bands Call and Response, Rubies and Shock have performed extensively nationally and internationally. Terri has a Bachelor of Arts from Rice University in Houston, Texas and is originally from Washington, D.C. and South Florida.

Born 1978, Helena, MT
Lives and works in Oakland, CA

Selected Exhibitions 

2021
Havasu Falls (Solo Show), Eleanor Harwood Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Janus II with Miya Ando, Marcela Pardo Ariza, James Perkins and Amy Lincoln, CULT | Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, San Francisco, CA 
Psychscapes (Solo Show), Hug Galerie, Photo Saint Germain, Paris, France

2020
American Dreams or Imagined Lands? with Mark Klett, Byron Wolfe, Jack Spencer and 
Christa Blackwood, Booth Western Art Museum, Cartersville, GA 
Our Eyes Are On Fire with Tammy Rae Carland, Jeffrey Cheung and Masako Miki, Curated by Lena Wolff, Sarah Shepard Gallery, Larkspur, CA
Creative Reverence with Colter Jacobsen and David Wilson, Round Weather Gallery, Oakland, CA
We’re all in this together with Masako Miki, Amy Nathan and Rebekah Goldstein, CULT | Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, San Francisco, CA 
BEYOND WORDS: In Support of Black-led Organizations Fighting for Social Justice and Equity, CULT | Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, Online
Special Print Sale to Support Frontline Heroes with Frank Thiel, Candida Höfer, Bastiaan Woudt, Mona Kuhn and Cig Harvey, Jackson Fine Art, Online Echoes of Bauhaus 
Photography Cast Long Shadows, Ruth’s Table, San Francisco, CA

2019
About the West with Ansel Adams and Danny Lyon, Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta, GA 
Surreal Sublime, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA
Summer Mixer with Wayne White, Jen Stark, Mark Wagner, Arno Beck, Stephen Ormandy and Kathryn Macnaughton, Joshua Liner Gallery, New York, NY 

2018
Shego/Hego/Ego – McEvoy Collection, Paris Photo, Paris, France
No Time, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco, CA 
FOCUS: California, Art Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Psychscapes (Solo Show), CULT | Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, San Francisco, CA
Special Editions, Minnesota Street Projects, San Francisco, CA

2016
Slow Dialogues,Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA 

2015
Experiments in Environment, Graham Foundation, Chicago, IL
Action Painting, Adobe Gallery, San Francisco, CA 

2014
The Possible, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA
The New Westward Expansion,Tartine, San Francisco, CA
Ghost in the Room (Solo Show), La Porte Peinte, Noyers-sur-Serein, France Quotidian, CelerySPACE, Berkeley, CA

2013
Thinking Like the Universe, Curated by Aimee Friberg, Hatch Gallery, Oakland, CA
Natural Selection, Creative Growth Art Center, Oakland, CA
Petite Sensation (Solo Show), diPietro, San Francisco, CA

2012
Auction to Benefit the Artists, Incline Gallery, San Francisco, CA 
Cinematheque Silent Auction, Incline Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2010
Six Degrees of Separation, LoBot Gallery, Oakland, CA 
Take (Solo Show), DDC Lab, New York, NY

2008
Sights of Sounds, Park Life, San Francisco, CA

PROJECtS

2012 - present
Founder and Director, The Chetwood Artist Residency, Oakland, CA 

SELECTED RESIDENCIES AND AWARDS 

2020
Djerassi Resident Artists Program Alternate, Woodside, CA 
Svane Family Foundation Award Recipient, San Francisco, CA 
Google Artist in Residence, Mountain View, CA 

2019
Facebook Artist in Residence, San Francisco, CA 
Suttle Lodge Artist in Residence, Sisters, OR 

2018
SFMoMA SECA Award Nominee, San Francisco, CA 

2015
Shared Space Artist in Residence, Pentwater, MI 

2014
La Porte Peinte Visiting Artist, Noyers-sur-Serein, France 

2013
Acre Visiting Artist, Steuben, WI 

2012
Mizzy Gizzy Artist in Residence, Nevada City, CA 

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

2021
Havasu Falls Catalogue, Edition of 100, Eleanor Harwood Gallery, San Francisco, CA 

2018
Psychscapes Catalogue, Edition of 100, CULT | Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, San Francisco, CA 2016
Action Painting, Little Paper Planes Publications, San Francisco, CA 

2015
The Possible Catalog, Berkeley Art Museum, CA 

2014
The Possible Artist Box, Edition of 500, Berkeley Art Museum, CA Overview, Edition of 200, Land and Sea, Oakland, CA 

2013
Petite Sensation, Edition of 500, self-published, Oakland, CA 

2012
SHOCK - Heaven 12”, Voltaire Records, San Francisco, CA 

2010
Eucalyptus Grove, Edition of 125, Ribbons Publications, Oakland, CA 

2007
Explode from the Center - Rubies, Tellé Records, Bergen, Norway 

2004
Winds Take No Shape - Call and Response, Badman Recording Co., Portland, OR 

2004
Tiger Teeth - Call and Response, Badman Recording Co, Portland, OR 

2001
Call and Response S/T, Emperor Norton Records, Los Angeles, CA 

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

2021
Kolpas, Norman. “Artist Spotlights.” Western Art and Architecture, February/March 2021 

2020
Jennings, Chris. “Utopia.” Aperture, Issue #241, Winter 2020 
Huisink, Merel. “Psychedelische landschappen.” Pf Fotografie Magazine - Cover, July 2020
Olsen, Kimberly. “Bay Area Roundup.” Luxe Magazine San Francisco, July/August 2020 

2019
Géniès, Bernard. “Nature Forte.” L’OBS Spécial Paris Photo, November 2019
Labong, Leilani Marie. “Prism Break.” San Francisco Magazine, October 2019 
Palumbo, Jacqui. “Did Ansel Adams’s Male Gaze Influence His Landscape Photography?” Artsy, August 13, 2019 
Goldstein, Melissa. “Terri Loewenthal’s Otherworldly Series.” C Magazine, Summer Issue, 2019 
Robertson, Michelle. “Oakland artist transforms Calif. landscapes into psychedelicphotographs.” SF Gate, May 7, 2019 

2018
Horne, Lydia. “Can you spot the hidden images in these psychedelic landscapes?” WIRED, June 7, 2018 
Desmarais, Charles. “Ephemeral Landscapes.” San Francisco Chronicle, May 16, 2018 
Loesch, Hannah. “Terri Loewenthal explores ‘the intersection of landscape and psyche.’”  Museé Magazine (France), April 18, 2018 
Kail, Ellyn. “Hallucinogenic Photos of the California Wilderness.” Feature Shoot, April 17, 2018 
Seikaly, Roula. “Psychedelic Pictures Reconsider a History of American Landscape Photography.” Humble Arts Foundation, April 10, 2018 
Doyle, India. “Like I’m working with them, alongside them, in tandem. Twin meets Terri  Loewenthal.” Twin Magazine (UK), March 28, 2018 
Smithson, Aline. “Terri Loewenthal: Psychscapes.” Lenscratch, March 15, 2018 
Schwab, Katharine. “Landscape Photography on Acid.” Fast Company, March 5, 2018 
Deer, Lame and Richard Erdroes. “States of Mind.” Lapham’s Quarterly, Winter 2018 

2011
Melendez, Franklin. Show Review - Shock. Artforum, January 2011 

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

2020
Collection of the City and County of San Francisco, San Francisco Arts Commission

2019
21st Century STEM Foundation, Atlanta, GA 
Collection of the City and County of San Francisco, San Francisco Arts Commission
Facebook Inc., San Francisco, CA 
Instagram Inc., Menlo Park, CA 
Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, Boston, MA 
Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, Phoenix, AZ 

2018
McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco, CA 

EDUCATION

1995
BA Rice University, Houston, TX