The landscape photography in Site: Unseen is all about whats not in the picture. Theres no dead bodies in Stephen Chalmers luminous, pigment-on-aluminum crime-scene prints, no sense of history in Zach Mazurs Native American massacre sites. The Spokane-based Chalmers combed police records for where serial killers dumped their victims bodies, then used GPS to reach the often remote, forested locations. Theyre not creepy, he told me, but I have to disagree. The supersaturated green vistas are ominous, empty, emptied. Another sort of history is documented in the black-and-white images from Mazur, who lives in Pullman. In Battle of Four Lakes Memorial, Facing East, we see what has become of the land opposite an historical marker for the 1858 battle, which took place near Spokane. A bike lies spilled along a dirt road, outside a malls chain-link fence. Inside the fence: a Bonanza restaurant and a Ford dealership. The Wild West has been conquered, the land turned into parking lots. (Gallery closed Sun.) ADRIANA GRANT
Jan. 24-Feb. 6, 11 a.m., 2009
