Mark Ruwedel's pictures of hell

Pictures of hell

When Mark Ruwedel's book Westward the Course of Empire was published in 2008, it showed, in a series of finely grained black-and-white photographs, the traces that remained in the landscape of the lines laid by railroad companies in the second half of the 19th century as they opened up the American and Canadian West. The pictures followed the skeleton tracks across plains, through cuts blasted in the rock, into derelict tunnels and over the remains of wooden trestles that carried the rails across rivers and creeks.

In making them, Ruwedel was following, consciously but not slavishly, the precedent that had laid the foundations of American landscape photography: the topographical studies taken for US government geological surveys and for railroad companies such as the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific, along whose original tracks he'd walked in Utah in 1994.

"I have come to think of the land as being an enormous historical archive," he wrote in 1996. "I am interested in revealing the narratives contained within the landscape, especially those places where the land reveals itself as being both an agent of change and the field of human endeavour."

Almost 20 years later, Ruwedel's new book of photographs shares the qualities evident in the earlier work: persistence, technical skill, an appreciation of historical narrative - as well as a wry sense of humour. Its unifying idea is to collect together a series of landscape photographs, each of which shows an area with a given name that has some connection to hell: Devils Gate, Satan Creek, Hell Roaring Canyon, Hells Acres Gulch.

What might at first appear little more than semantic convenience soon becomes an additional spur to reading the landscapes more closely, appreciating their detail while trying to decipher the characteristics that earned them their names. In some cases geological formations give the clue; but in others something more metaphysical is at play. What made this scrubby patch of land a devil's playground? Who drowned in Satan Creek? What happened here - or what did people fear would happen?

From British Columbia to Texas, in landscapes scarred by abortive attempts at occupation, we are thrown back to what it might have meant to be a native American, a pioneer, a prospector, an outlaw, or a photographer, crossing the territory 150 years ago.

'Mark Ruwedel, Pictures of Hell' is at Gallery Luisotti, Santa Monica CA, until May 30; galleryluisotti.com. 'Pictures of Hell', edited by Simon Baker and Sebastien Montabonel, is published by RAM Publications Inc, rampub.com, and in a limited edition by Alaska Editions, London.

An exhibition to celebrate Mark Ruwedel's Scotiabank Photography Award is at the Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto, until June 28, ryerson.ca. His work is also included in 'The Memory of Time' at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, until September 13; nga.gov

Slideshow photographs: The artist and Gallery Luisotti, Santa Monica

The US Board of Geographic Names advises that 'apostrophes suggesting possession or association are not to be used within the body of a proper geographic name'

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