Epic, Vast, and Unforgettable: Victoria Sambunaris’ Transformation of a Landscape Is a Love Letter to the American Terrain
Welcome to this edition of [book spotlight]. Today, we uncover the layers of 'Transformation of a Landscape,' by Victoria Sambunaris (published by Radius Books). We'd love to read your comments below about these insights and ideas behind the artist's work.
The most important photographs of America aren’t taken in cities.
Victoria Sambunaris has spent 25 years crossing the country, camera in hand, documenting the landscapes most people drive past without a second thought. She doesn’t chase busy streets or famous landmarks—she focuses on the spaces in between, where industry, history, and nature collide. Her work is about understanding how the land is shaped, used, and transformed over time. If you think of America as highways and skyscrapers, her images will make you reconsider.
Sambunaris travels alone for months, living out of her car, following trains, pipelines, and geological formations across the U.S.
She shoots with a large 5×7 film camera, a slow and precise process that forces her to study each frame before clicking the shutter. This is not fast photography. It’s deliberate, methodical, and deeply researched. Every image carries the weight of history, showing how politics, economics, and human ambition have left their mark on the land.
Alone on the road, with nothing but a camera and curiosity, Victoria Sambunaris documents a disappearing America. This is America, not as it’s advertised, but as it really looks.
Transformation of a Landscape
For over 25 years, Victoria Sambunaris has traveled alone across the United States, capturing the shifting relationship between nature, industry, and human intervention. Transformation of a Landscape is the culmination of this work—a striking visual record of America’s evolving terrain, photographed with a large-format 5×7 camera.
Unlike traditional landscape photography, Sambunaris does not seek untouched wilderness or postcard-perfect scenery. Instead, she documents the intersections of natural beauty and industrial expansion—mining sites, highways, pipelines, borderlands, and transportation hubs. Each image is rooted in extensive research, revealing the historical, political, and economic forces shaping the land.
The book combines her large-scale photographs with archival materials, road logs, geological studies, and collected artifacts, creating a layered narrative that extends beyond photography. Sambunaris’ work offers a rare, unfiltered look at how landscapes are molded over time—not by nature alone, but by human ambition and intervention.
Transformation of a Landscape is a deep exploration of place, history, and the unseen forces that define the American landscape. (Radius Books, Amazon)
Concept and inspiration: How did the concept of “social geography” shape your approach to Transformation of a Landscape, and what inspired you to focus on the interplay between the natural and manmade within the American landscape?
Transformation of the Landscape comes after my first book from 10 years ago and part of a larger project called Taxonomy of a Landscape which began after graduating with an MFA from Yale in 1999. Both books are made up of several bodies of work- the equivalent of individual chapters. Each chapter documents specific aspects of the American regional landscape that I’ve photographed while driving across the United States the last 25 years. When I first began making these journeys across the country, the landscape was unfamiliar, an anomaly, leading me to dig deeper into the histories and politics of place. With each body of work, there were images that seemed to respond to my larger search about the mythic ideals of opportunity, prosperity and success that I have been examining since my days in grad school, Manifest Destiny and such. As time went on, the questions which grew out of my research became more and more focused, as I scoured the landscape for concrete traces of the historical legacy of these foundational myths that have to do with the natural and the manmade and our imprint on the land from geological formations that evolved millions of years ago to how we treat landscape today.
Could you share an example where the historical narrative you uncovered completely shifted your original vision for a project?
High and Dry was a series of work I began in 2020, I was navigating desert areas in California. On my way to the Anza-Borrego in the Colorado Desert, I stopped to camp at the Salton Sea, California’s largest inland lake in Imperial Valley. Initially, I saw the Salton Sea as a toxic wasteland. Digging deeper into the histories and politics I began to examine this place through layers of sedimented time, from its origin 3 million years ago as a vast inland sea through its evolutionary cycle over time as a fresh water lake, it’s current status as a drainage basin for the Colorado River to its probable future as a dry lake bed. Punctuate this geologic history with human interaction from the military, railroad, mining, and agriculture industries and I started to understand how its degenerated over time thanks to human intervention, engineering hubris (an irrigation project in the agriculture-intensive Imperial Valley that went awry in 1905), recreational development projects and real estate hucksterism into its current state as a toxic hyper saline sump. An awareness of history is essential to grounding and filling out the project.
The Salton Sea was one of those places I encountered along my journey that I found intriguing and wanted to learn more about. Over the years, I have had countless moments on the road where a discovery led me down another path of exploration--whether for the project I was currently working on or for a future one. For example, in 2007, while working on the I-80 corridor across the country, I met a geologist who invited me to return to Wyoming to join a group on an expedition to Yellowstone National Park and the Snake River Plain. The areas rich geologic history compelled me to return to make a new body of work the next year in 2008. Moments like these where I veer from the original idea or find inspiration from something entirely new are endless when I think back on projects like my time in Alaska in 2003, the US-Mexico border in 2009, and the Mexican Gulf Coast in 2013. With every project I set out with a specific intent, but as I navigated the landscape, I discovered new insights and incorporated that into my work in some way.
Methodology and journey: Each year, you embark on long photographic journeys across the U.S. What does this process of immersive exploration bring to your work, and how do you prepare for these expeditions?
The work is project based and I travel alone by car for months on end. The process begins with a curiosity shaped and driven by the research I’ve done in advance and usually having to do with something I’ve read or seen, or sometimes a conversation that draws me to a location that I’m interested in pursuing photographically. I’ve traveled the US-Mexico border wall, the Alaskan pipeline, to Utah to see one of the largest open pit copper mines. I have followed transportation systems that include truck, rail and petro-chemical transport and navigated major rivers observing human interaction and industry. Sometimes I’m studying a place that is strictly geological. Once I launch out on the road, I begin by exploring the area, talking to locals, and absorbing information about the place. I work for months at a time, camping and living a minimal existence that allows me unmitigated focus. Of course, chance, luck and the unexpected always factor into the work. And the ideas that I arrived with consistently adapt and change as I move along on my journey. Once I’m back east and begin the editing and printing, the project starts to take shape and I’m able to better define those initial ideas. I usually return to the road once or twice more to fill in what’s missing and it takes 2-3 years to complete a project.
Technical choices: You use a 5×7-inch field camera to create your large-scale photographs. What drew you to this format, and how does it influence the way you capture and present the American landscape?
The 5x7 field camera demands a slow methodical pace to observe the world before making a picture. There is preparation and expense involved: the gear, film, film holders, tripod, light meter. But the effort is worth it. I spend most of my time on the road scouting. When the circumstances are right: the light primarily, I shoot. Usually, just one or two sheets of film. The last few years, I have been shooting black and white film often of the same frame. A few of these contact sheets are represented in the book. As well as the diaristic studies I make with a smaller camera.
I’m often asked why film? Why go to trouble or expense of film. In comparison, a digital camera has too many distracting bells and whistles for me and is an entirely different machine where one may shoot 1000 images and edit after to find your one. Also, having to worry about recharging batteries while I’m camping. With the large format, I cut to the chase and find the one image I want before I actually shoot. The benefit is seeing through the large piece of 5x7 glass to frame seeing the world upside down and backwards directly through the lens. What you see is what you get. For me, it’s a thrill to work so hard to find that one view, set up the camera, make one or two exposures and especially the anticipation of getting back east to see the results and if I got it. The drawback, the abundance of cumbersome equipment that must be carried up the mountain.
Thematic focus: Your work explores the transformation of the American landscape through political, technological, and industrial interventions. How do you decide which locations and subjects best tell this story?
I am curious about what I see in the present moment which leads me to delve deep into the histories behind what is visible. For example, I was working at the Salton Sea in 2020, California’s largest inland lake. One can dismiss this as a toxic wasteland or alternatively, you can move in closer and examine it through layers of sedimented time, from its origin 3 million years ago as a vast inland sea through its evolutionary cycle over time as a fresh water lake, it’s current status as a drainage basin for the Colorado River to its probable future as a dry lake bed. Punctuate this geologic history with human interaction from the military, railroad, mining, and agriculture industries and you get to see how its degenerated over time thanks to human intervention, engineering hubris (an irrigation project in the agriculture-intensive Imperial Valley that went awry in 1905), recreational development projects and real estate hucksterism into its current state as a toxic hyper saline sump. An awareness of history is essential to grounding and filling out the project and knowing the full story.
Role of archival elements: The book incorporates ephemera like maps, road logs, and artifacts alongside your photographs. How do these elements enhance the narrative and meaning of your work?
The ephemera encompasses the essential and incidental elements of my work as a photographer and a chronicler. I operate out of my car when I’m on the road and have a tent mounted to the top so I can sleep where I am working. I bring with me books, maps and reference materials and collect mineral specimen, literature about the area, and gifts from people I meet. I document all aspects of my trip from road logs to journaling to snapshotting with smaller handheld cameras and video. This documentation offers a more intimate view and expanded perspective of my various journeys and life on the road. There is a lot of down time to keep this kind of detailed information for my records that helps me take in the full story and experience. I find archives fascinating and included some of my findings in the book. For example, Patricia McCormick, the photographs of the female bullfighter in the book, I discovered while working on the US-Mexico border which prompted me to pursue a chase from Del Rio, Texas to Big Spring, Texas to an art school in Los Angeles where she worked. I work with three other artists in NY on a small book publication called ASMR4 where we scour archives and make small limited edition books as a collaborative project.
You can see them here.
Connection with viewers: What do you hope audiences take away from Transformation of a Landscape regarding our collective roles and responsibilities in shaping the environment?
I don’t expect viewers to gain all that I am thinking about or striving for in the work when seeing one of my photographs. I try to express those sentiments when I am lecturing by putting forth histories, facts and statistics that I have researched and are engaging to me personally. The book falls somewhere in between the work that I exhibit and the information revealed in the lectures. But I do hope the viewer scrutinizes the details, contemplates the work and considers those issues that make this country and our politics so complex whether it’s something obviously political like the depletion of water in the west or a geological formation that brings to mind an existential moment such as our fleeting time on earth. It’s up to the viewer to evaluate their own perceptions and meanings as they do with any of the other art mediums.
Challenges on the road: Spending months traveling alone for your work must come with unique challenges. What are some of the most memorable or difficult moments you’ve faced, and how have they shaped your photography?
There are many stories to tell. This year, I will begin to record my journals from the last 25 years that tell the stories of the encounters, the hardships, the psyche, the observations, and the details of my journeys over the years. I have great faith in human beings. People have been for the most part inviting, kind and curious despite differences in politics or ideologies. I have had countless encounters and many who have invited me to their homes for a shower, a bed and a meal or to their campfires for an evening chat. And there are endless moments I am in my own head not encountering a person for days and no cell phone to distract or direct. I look back on those times as blissful.
How do you think those solitary, sometimes difficult experiences shape the emotional tone of your photographs?
I am not sure if my psyche directly shapes the emotional tone of my photographs—it’s not something I’ve considered. I haven’t thought so deeply about how my emotional state on the road, whether it’s the bliss of discovery or the hardships of daily existence, might spill into the outcome of my photographs. If so, I would like to know! I do capture those emotions in my journals along with conversations with the people I encounter, facts that I have discovered, and impressions that I have about what I am seeing or the politics of place. Writing allows me to process all of those moments. And whether or not they overtly influence the photographs, they are an essential part of what I do—the work, the journey and the creative process.
Advice for emerging photographers: For photographers interested in long-term, research-driven projects like yours, what practical tips or lessons would you share to help them stay focused and authentic in their creative journeys?
Stay true to yourself and your practice and avoid trends. Have patience with your work and the time needed to make good work. Immerse yourself in the communities you are working, talk to locals, ask questions and try to be open to the world you are working in.
In general, I would say fill your world with inspiration (art, film, literature, poetry) that feeds you and take time for contemplation and self-reflection. And most importantly, stay curious.
To discover more about this intriguing body of work and how you can acquire your own copy, you can find and purchase the book here. (Radius Books, Amazon)
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