Terri Loewenthal’s Psychscapes, on view at CULT | Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, San Francisco through April 21, considers the California landscape as a canvas for technological and psychological interpretation.

Terri Loewenthal’s colorful visions are grounded in – and radically riff on – the photographic expeditions of post-Civil War US Geological surveys, which had many now-controversial goals. On one level, newly gathered information might help industrialists better understand – and subdue –  the vast terrain between the growing nation’s eastern and western shores and properly feed an increasingly hungry consumer economy. On another, to help “secure” the land and fully realize Manifest Destiny’s mandate, governmental agencies used survey information to envision future European-settler civilizations. Photography was a tool to meet both of these ends and visually justify their explorations and conquests. 

Exhibition review by Roula Seikaly