Grey Crawford

Los Angeles–based Grey Crawford (born 1951) produced the photo series El Mirage in the southern Mojave Desert in 1975–78. Influenced early on by the forms of fellow artists Ellsworth Kelly and Frank Stella, and later by land artists such as Michael Heizer and Gordon Matta-Clark, Crawford’s work features minimalist structures made of glass and steel. These abstract works focus on the artist’s interventions in nature and architecture that seek to extend the limits of photography into land art and hard-edged abstraction.

Crawford’s day-to-day job working as a photographer for architects reveals its payoff in the work’s smart presentation of its difficult subject. Besides the black-and-white photos that Crawford is famous for, this volume also contains Crawford’s experiments in color photography.

This book also includes an introduction by curator Timothy Persons and an essay by photography writer Lyle Rexer.