So far I've only seen this on YouTube on an awful, faded, scratched and beat up print, so this could well be even better than my reaction. But it's already pretty fascinating.
Benning takes striking images of modern day Utah – both landscapes and civilization -- and overlays them with a series of news stories read aloud from The New York Times, following Utah's history from the 1840s to the 1980s. A fascinating history lesson, full of contradictions (e.g. Mormon leaders often come off as monsters, but occasionally seem far more sane and kind than the world around them).
The echoes between the images and the history, knowing that the people we're hearing about lived and died on the lands we're looking at make all sorts of poetic connections about the land, the news media, religion, the nature of 'progress'.
Never boring, it somehow just missed greatness for me, perhaps because the more emotional layer I kept expecting never quite hit. But if I could see a good print, if those landscapes could show the naked primal beauty I suspect the images have, I have a feeling this could work at yet another level.
Benning takes striking images of modern day Utah – both landscapes and civilization -- and overlays them with a series of news stories read aloud from The New York Times, following Utah's history from the 1840s to the 1980s. A fascinating history lesson, full of contradictions (e.g. Mormon leaders often come off as monsters, but occasionally seem far more sane and kind than the world around them).
The echoes between the images and the history, knowing that the people we're hearing about lived and died on the lands we're looking at make all sorts of poetic connections about the land, the news media, religion, the nature of 'progress'.
Never boring, it somehow just missed greatness for me, perhaps because the more emotional layer I kept expecting never quite hit. But if I could see a good print, if those landscapes could show the naked primal beauty I suspect the images have, I have a feeling this could work at yet another level.