Michael Light

[17][29][30] Writer Lawrence Weschler described Light as "a photographer of the tragedy of the commons," whose work, "by turns fiercely political and achingly rhapsodic … has come to focus, with gathering power and lucidity, on the rapture and the rupture that are man’s trace on the land.

"[18] Other critics liken him to photographers exploring beauty and toxicity, such as David Maisel, Richard Misrach, Edward Burtynsky and Emmet Gowin, while characterizing his concerns as less overtly environmental and more romantic.

[8][35][37] He explored these themes in books and exhibitions that eschewed polemics in favor of narrative, interpretive curation and matter-of-fact presentation: historical images with little or no text that proffered "the quotidian bumping gently into the unprecedented," according to New Yorker critic Anthony Lane.

[29][18][7][41][24] Often shot low to the ground from vertiginous, tilted angles, these images examine the scars created by intensive strip mining and industrialization, urbanization, land development and human movement.

[12][29][42][24] Light chooses mainly western locales—the urban sprawl of Los Angeles, Utah's Bingham Canyon Mine (the largest man-made excavation), ex-urban luxury housing developments outside Phoenix and Las Vegas, and the Great Basin desert—for their aridness and lack of vegetation, which allow unobscured views of human impacts.

[42][47][48][41] Often left to revert to sagebrush in bankruptcy, the aborted developments resemble abandoned mining operations, leading writers to note an "ugly convergence"[49] between expansionism and the American dream, the economic vertigo of conspicuous consumption and housing market collapses, and the ecological nightmares of heavy industry.

[48][41][42][50] In the "Lake Lahontan" and "Lake Bonneville" (both 2017–8) series, Light captured spiraling swirls of vehicle tracks, roads and trails and "city" grids from Burning Man etched into the Nevada desert and Utah salt flats; reviews liken them to historical human traces (North American wagon trails, Apollo mission rover paths) and, in form, to abstract Brice Marden paintings, the calligraphic drawings of Cy Twombly, and graffiti.