Summer on the Skokomish

2010

American, born 1957

Oregon-based photographer Steve Davis appropriates cues from 19th-century landscape painting, including the pastoral and sublime. He borrows this language, yet introduces an element that imparts a broader knowledge of how nature and the individual coexist. Here, Davis photographed adults and children swimming in the Skokomish River while smoke billows in the distance from a wildfire, which erupted in the Olympic National Park near Shelton, Washington in August 2010. We most often think of the devastating destruction caused by raging forest fires, but these fires can support the creation of diverse habitats within a park. They are considered a natural process that helps maintain the ecosystem by releasing nutrients that encourage plant growth.

Archival inkjet print

image size: 27 x 34 in. (68.6 x 86.4cm), sheet size: 29 x 36 in. (73.7 x 91.4cm)

Purchased with funds from Clinton T. Willour and an anonymous donor

2011.18

Provenance: The artist; [James Harris Gallery, Seattle, Washington]; purchased by Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, 2011

Courtesy of the artist

Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Reclaimed: Nature and Place through Contemporary Eyes, June 30 - Sept. 11, 2011.

Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.

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