The preponderance of landscape photography exhibitions invading our nations’ museums got us thinking about the vast tradition of American landscape photography. By and large, landscape photographers — working in tandem with a team of painters and writers — have accounted for our popular understanding of what America looks like. Back in the 19th century, Timothy O’Sullivan introduced Americans to the sweeping vistas of the Southwest with his survey images, in the ’30s WPA photographers Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange documented the trials and travails of blighted farmers in the great plains, and in the ’70s William Eggleston threw his hat in the mix with his whiskey soaked images of the South.
For all of the iconic images of the United States and their seemingly quaint regionalism, how easy is it to tell where a photograph was taken? Take our quiz to find out.
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Answer key: 1. Los Angeles, CA; 2. Jones Beach, Long Island, NY; 3. Klamath Falls, OR; 4. Los Angeles, CA; 5. The Cascades (Washington); 6. New York, NY; 7. Rt. 94, North Dakota; 8. Slab City, CA; 9. Las Vegas, NV; 10. New York, NY.
Top Image: Joel Sternfeld, After a Flash Flood, Rancho Mirage, California, 1979, Courtesy Museum of Modern Art, New York
Related: Into the West at MoMA and Robert Frank’s The Americans at SFMoMA