Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, at Rozel Point, off of Utah’s Great Salt Lake, shot by Gianfranco Gorgoni in 2010.

Gorgoni saw the odd figure in his work more as “a personage of scale than a protagonist … for understanding the grandiosity of his work,” he wrote in his monograph. *Spiral Jetty* shot by Gorgoni in 1970 (*top*) and 2013 (*above*).

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s *Running Fence* on land (Sonoma, California) and sea (Marin), 1976.

Ugo Rondinone’s Seven Magic Mountains, near Jean Dry Lake, Nevada, 2016.

*Top,* Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, in Utah’s Great Basin Desert, 2016; *above,* Michael Heizer’s *Circular Surface Planar Displacement Drawing,* at Jean Dry Lake, 1970 (person for scale).

Richard Serra’s Shift, in King City, Ontario, circa 1972.

*Top,* Heizer’s *Double Negative,* at Mormon Mesa, in Overton, Nevada, 1970; *above,* Heizer’s *Complex One,* in Garden City, Nevada, 1974.

Land Before Time

Gianfranco Gorgoni’s otherworldly shots put the 20th-century Land Art movement of Richard Serra, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and others on the map

When it comes to Land Art, you have to be there. How else to fully appreciate Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Running Fence, Michael Heizer’s Circular Surface Planar Displacement Drawing, or Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels? There’s only one other way.

The Italian photographer Gianfranco Gorgoni, who died in 2019, translated the magic and majesty of this 20th-century art movement to images that are impressive in their own right. Gorgoni got to the heart of their vision, be it the sprawling works of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, whom the photographer met in the mid-70s in the stairway of his building, or the towering ones of Ugo Rondinone, who writes in the first career-spanning catalogue of Gorgoni’s work, “I have trusted him as much as I have ever trusted anyone.” Others did, too. Gorgoni often helped the artists whose work he photographed plot a piece in its location.

Gianfranco Gorgoni: Land Art Photographs publishes next week in conjunction with an exhibition of more than 50 of Gorgoni’s large-scale images, on now at the Nevada Museum of Art. —Julia Vitale

Artworks: © Holt/Smithson Foundation and Dia Art Foundation/VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY/Collection of Dia Art Foundation (Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels); © Christo (Running Fence); © Ugo Rondinone/Co-produced and presented by the Nevada Museum of Art and Art Production Fund (Seven Magic Mountains); © Michael Heizer (Circular Surface Planar Displacement Drawing; Double Negative); © 2021 Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY (Shift); © Michael Heizer/Triple Aught Foundation (Complex One). Photographs: © Estate of Gianfranco Gorgon/The Collection of the Nevada Museum of Art/Center for Art + Environment Archive Collections (Spiral Jetty, 1970; Double Negative); © Estate of Gianfranco Gorgon/The Collection of the Nevada Museum of Art/The Altered Landscape/Carol Franc Buck Collection/Support from the Estate of Nancy L. Peppin (all others)

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Land Before Time