THE EDGE

Delphine Sims

Laurie Brown has long stood at the edge. Looking towards barren
horizons or generic construction sites, she has dedicated her career
to photographing the edges of our civilization. These landscapes,
which we often overlook during society’s efforts to masterfully
develop, are memorialized in Brown’s photographs. For several
years in the 1980s, Brown trekked to the edge of a number of
Southern California cities to capture panoramic views of the before
and after. After most plant and animal life had been expelled, Brown
captured the remains: geometric tracks left by heavy equipment.
Vehicles of terraforming cultivated the land for a new future, a new
purpose—to sustain suburban life, with its own root-like piping
and habitats of luxury. The sites pictured in Earth Edges (1982-84)
convey the quiet, mundane moments before construction begins.
Over decades these massive projects have colonized the Southern
California region. Brown photographed the transformed and now
prepared nature on which new homes and new lives would be built.
Laurie Brown, Expeditionary Edges, Dana Point, California, 1983. Collection of the California Museum of Photography at UCR ARTSblock, gift of the artist, 2015.0006.0001.01
In photographs taken in Orange County, California, Brown
documented an immense shift in American life, aptly known as
the “edge city.” Defined by journalist and author Joel Garreau
in the early 1990s, the edge city was a new urban center with
all the functions of a city, but sprawling and far removed from The desolation of Brown’s photographs challenge perceptions earlier, in 1972.4 Limited in size and scope, the exhibition was
the iconic downtowns of typical metropolitan cities.1 The edge of beauty, questioning the celebration of traditional landscape unable to feature the remarkable number of artists, particularly
city restructured the United States, allowing new generations of environments such as lush agriculture or untouched native female photographers, commenting on the new altered landscape.
pioneers the opportunity to achieve the American Dream—to buy countryside. Brown’s work is that of a subjective photographer, Still, the astutely titled New Topographics set a precedent for the
a home; only now these houses line the fringes of society. Garreau granting viewers their own perspective. In each vibrant yet deserted long lasting investigation and celebration of the changing style of
believes these developments were modeled after the exponential scene, Earth Edges promotes analyses from a range of resident landscape photography not only amongst scholars but also in the
rise of suburban life in and around Los Angeles. Irvine, a city audiences: the newest beneficiaries of the American Dream; the work of artists.
that Garreau found to be a prescient example of these booming older, rural residents who long for the disappearing farmland; and
new communities,2 is nestled amongst the Orange County cities the local scholars and Native Americans who note the history of the Expanding on the influence of Baltz, Brown photographed urban
featured in Brown’s photographs: Mission Viejo, Dana Point, and region and the long-lost native flora and fauna. This is the genius growth, but with a distinctive typology: markings of human activity,
Newport Beach. of Brown’s artistry; she methodically presents the landscapes, with panoramic views, dynamic titles, long horizontal lines dividing
a detachment that allows the delicate, quotidian subject matter to the plane, and vibrant colors. Akin to fellow photographers of
As Garreau conducted his research on the edge city, Brown resonate with a wide audience. the movement, the remnants of human presence—rather than
was meticulously capturing similar locations. Her panoramic depictions of individuals—are quintessential to Brown’s work. To
photographs formally demonstrate the extreme changes. Critics Brown’s ability to separate herself from the politics of urbanity experience the effects of human intervention in the land, such
of the edge city chastised developers for destroying the once- is a key element to the genre of her photography, known as as terraforming, was a necessary part of understanding the new
beautiful landscape of Southern California; nostalgia for citrus New Topographics. This transformative style of photography topography. Earth Edges is a stark reminder of the scarred earth
groves dominated their critiques. But the uniform crops and documented the unremarkable and commonplace in contemporary mankind leaves behind in its march toward the future.
irrigation systems of the farmland were the original terraformed life, but without critique. A seismic shift in the history of landscape
environments. The massive agricultural equipment mangled and photography, the exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of Brown’s distinctive titles hint at her awareness of the subject and
destroyed the indigenous chaparral landscape; rows of non-native a Man-Altered Landscape highlighted the innovation of master the magnitude of its symbolism. Expeditionary Edges (1983) might
orange trees replaced the patterned hillsides of buckwheat and photographers who captured this changing American landscape: reference the history of 19th-century American frontier imagery and
Manzanita. Brown’s photographs of meandering tire marks and the suburban.3 Organized in 1975 by William Jenkins for the George then-pioneers of these unknown terrains: the first homesteaders.
bulldozed hillsides are not documents of early terraforming but of Eastman House in New York, the exhibition featured influential While engaging with this evolution of landscape photography,
later generations of redeveloped earth. The edges are now human photographers such as Robert Adams, Joe Deal, Lewis Baltz, Brown may also allude to those now at the forefront of the late
made. and Nicholas Nixon. Brown studied with Baltz just a few years 20th-century tract housing, the first homeowners. Transitory
Quietude (1982) suggests the tranquility of a once wild and natural
landscape but also a fleeting moment in an active construction site.
The complexity of Brown’s work consistently asks the question:
What does it mean to engage with an altered landscape in the same
manner you might with the natural landscape?

Brown’s photographs are a cultural commentary on the generational

shifts of lifestyle. Each print is embedded with layered meanings:
the past, present, and future not only of photography, but the
entirety of humankind. Through her use of color photography and
repetition, the typically mundane landscapes become dynamic
topographies of an Earth of possibility, growth, and life. Striking
blue skies and billowing clouds emerge from the edges of each
landscape and wash the photographs with a sense of hope and
pride in the timeless beauty of an ever-evolving future.

Notes
1. Joel Garreau, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier, Doubleday, New York,
1991, 13-14.
2. ibid., 269-270.
3. Britt Salvesen, “New Topographics,” New Topographics, Center for
Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson, 2009, 55-58.
4. ibid., 247-261.

Laurie Brown (born in Austin, Texas in 1937) is an Orange County-based

photographer who was raised in Los Angeles. Her work has been featured
in solo and group exhibitions at the California Museum of Photography;
Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern
Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Sezon
Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, among elsewhere. Her works reside in the
collections of numerous institutions, including the California Museum of
Photography; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art,
San Diego; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno; Orange County Museum of Art,
Newport Beach; Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach; Huntington Library,
San Marino; and Center for Creative Photography, Tucson. Brown was
awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Grant in 1978, and
the Outstanding Individual Artist award by ARTS Orange County in 2002.
She earned her MFA at California State University, Fullerton, and her BA in
International Relations at Scripps College in Claremont.

Delphine Sims is a graduate student in the History of Art program at UC

Berkeley. Her research focuses on the history of landscape photography
in California and the evolving urban landscape. She previously worked as
Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Photography at the Santa Barbara
Museum of Art, and held positions at the California African American
Museum, and the USC Fisher Museum of Art. She earned a double BA
in African American Studies and Art History at the University of Southern
California, Los Angeles.

Laurie Brown: Earth Edges is organized by the California Museum of Selections from the Permanent Collection of the
Photography at UCR ARTSblock, and is supported with funds provided by California Museum of Photography at UCR ARTSblock
UCR’s College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (CHASS), and the
City of Riverside. All works are from the permanent collection of the California September 17, 2016–July 1, 2017
Top: Temporal Layering, Newport Beach, California, 1982 (detail), 2015.0006.0001.04
Museum of Photography.
Bottom: Sculptured Time, Newport Beach, California, 1982 (detail), 2015.0006.0001.07
Cover: Journey Foretold, Laguna Niguel, California, 1984 (detail), 2015.0006.0001.06
artsblock.ucr.edu All collection of the California Museum of Photography at UCR ARTSblock, gift of the artist.