Laura McPhee @ MFA

Bostonist was invited to a viewing of the latest show in the MFA's contemporary gallery - Laura McPhee: River of No Return.

The first thing we noticed was the sheer scale of the images - these are huge prints, roughly 6x8 feet. The scale suits the subject matter perfectly - vast vistas of the western landscape (the project was shot in rural Idaho) and larger-than-life full-length portraits.

The work offers a glimpse into the paradoxical existence of people who live off this rural, western land. We see images of a traditional agrarian life; but these are juxtaposed with images of new construction, enormous quarries and trucks hauling away chunks of the landscape for use elsewhere.

The most powerful group of prints, in our opinion, was in the central room of the gallery. This room was primarily filled with pictures of pastoral fences surrounding empty fields - but interspersed were extremely bloody images of a freshly-slaughtered elk. For us, this highlighted the dichotomy between the peaceful surroundings and the violence inherent to human survival in a sometimes brutal rural environment.

Sprinkled throughout the galleries are larger-than-life images of a young woman named Mattie, who seems to be the personification for McPhee of the world that she is photographing. Mattie appears holding a variety of dead animals, in clothing that ranges from casual to formal. She serves almost as our guide through the exhibition, giving a human face to the landscape. We don't get much of a sense of Mattie as a person however; she is used as a symbolic figure.

McPhee is a Boston-area artist, and an instructor at MassArt - we look forward to seeing her future work.

Laura McPhee: River of No Return will be on view from May 13 through September 17, 2006. A public conversation with McPhee will take place on Wednesday June 7 at 6:30pm.

(Image: "Judy Tracking Radio-Collared Wolves From Her Yard, Summer Range, H-Hook Ranch, Custer County, Idaho" The Alturas Foundation/Courtesy of Bernard Toale Gallery, Boston and Bonni Benrubi Gallery, NY/ (c) Laura McPhee/ Courtesy, MFA Boston)