Victoria Sambunaris

Victoria Sambunaris creates large-scale photographs of the American West that examine the intersections of modern civilization and the natural environment. Inspired by nineteenth century expeditionary photographers, Sambunaris combines in-depth planning and research with a laborious mode of shooting, sometimes waiting days for the right conditions. The resulting photographs communicate a deeply layered sense of place and a nuanced view of the complex issues surrounding American land use and management.

Sambunaris received her MFA from Yale University School of Art. She is the recipient of the Julius Shulman Institute Excellence in Photography Award, the Anonymous Was a Woman Award, and an Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship Grant. In 2011, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery presented a mid-career retrospective of her work which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago and the Nevada Museum of Art. A retrospective of forty works is exhibited at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art through May 1, 2021. Sambunaris’s work can be seen in the collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. See more of her work here.

Photo Credit: E. Russell Redmond