Lake Manly: Death Valley; Footpath on a Pleistocene Gravel Bench

Ruwedel views the land as a vast historical archive, "inscribed with the evidence of many pasts." This fascination underscores The Ice Age, a sustained and prolific series begun the early 1990s. This body of work includes hundreds of photographs-including those presented here-made in the desert regions of the western United States. Ruwedel's explicitly contemporary vision-his use of repetition and his cool, seemingly detached style-emphasizes the impact of human intervention, rather than a more idealized notion of nature as untouched wilderness.