Terra Incognita

One Reply to “Terra Incognita”

1. Synopsis: In the early 90s, shortly after moving from San Francisco to New Orleans, Richard Sexton began making black/white landscape photographs of the gulf coast. Over the years, he slowly added to this body of work that began in the coastal regions of Walton County, Florida, and eventually encompassed landscapes in and around New Orleans, in other areas of the Florida panhandle, southwest Georgia, and the Mississippi coast. After fifteen years, the potential for a book-length volume of work emerged. Sexton approached Chronicle Books, a publisher with which he had a long and successful history creating books devoted to architecture, design, lifestyle, and urbanism. Though there had been a lengthy and highly successful collaboration with Chronicle on books of a more commercial nature, Terra Incognita was somewhat different in that it was conceived as a fine art photography book. In Terra Incognita, Sexton’s photographs are the central focus of the work.

   A major exhibition of the photographs from Terra Incognita is currently being organized by The Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. This exhibit of approximately 60 images will hang in the main gallery on the Ogden’s fourth floor and will open on October 6, 2007, the evening of Art for Art’s Sake, and will continue through January 2, 2008.

   Terra Incognita features 83 black/white images reproduced in high-quality duotone with a spot varnish. The format is 11” x 12” and includes two gatefold full-bleed reproductions that are 12” x 44” in scale.

   Commentary
   Following a path and a vision of the coastal South established by painters such as Regis Gignoux, Joseph Rusling Meeker, George Herbert McCord, and Martin Johnson Heade, and extended by photographers including William Henry Jackson, Walker Evans, and Clarence John Laughlin, Richard Sexton’s Terra Incognita is a significant addition to the visual history of the Gulf Coast South.
   —Dr. J. Richard Gruber, from his foreword to Terra Incognita

   Richard Sexton not only finds beauty in the landscape, but meaning and worth. In the end, these photographs, through the explorations of their maker, foster some understanding of the lesser known, permitting us to find, in this unknown land, recognition and universal truth.

   John Lawrence from his introduction to Terra Incognita

   Terra Incognita is simply brilliant. A lovely book, with very strong and well seen images, beautifully produced. I love the reproduction quality.

   Michael Reichmann, photographer, photo educator, and publisher of the Luminous Landscape web site

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