Lake Manly: Death Valley, Prehistoric Rock Alignment, Along an Unnamed Wash, Site 407-56, Looking West
1997
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image/sheet: 37.4 × 47.5 cm (14 3/4 × 18 11/16 in.) mount: 60.96 × 71.12 cm (24 × 28 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of J. Patrick and Patricia A. Kennedy
Accession Number
2020.163.37
Art Historical Context
In Mark Ruwedel's *Lake Manly: Death Valley, Prehistoric Rock Alignment, Along an Unnamed Wash Site 407-56, Looking West* (1997), visitors encounter a haunting gelatin silver print capturing ancient human traces etched into the stark American desert. This meticulously detailed photograph gazes westward across a prehistoric rock alignment in Death Valley National Park, along an unnamed wash designated as archaeological Site 407-56. Lake Manly, the long-vanished Pleistocene lake that once filled the valley, provides a profound backdrop, evoking millennia of environmental change and Indigenous pr...
About the Artist
Mark Ruwedel
Mark Ruwedel, born on June 11, 1954, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, initially pursued painting, earning a BFA from Kutztown State College in 1978. He transitioned to photography during this time, later obtaining an MFA from Concordia University in Montreal in 1983. Working as a custom printer in Pennsylvania from 1979 to 1980 honed his technical skills before he relocated to Canada, where he taught a...