Mimi Plumb: Sheltering Under The White Sky – AMERICAN SUBURB X

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by

Trent
in

Mimi Plumb: Sheltering Under The White Sky

“I hear the sound of victory. I hear the sound of victory. I hear the sound of victory”. 1976, the centenary-a procrastinator’s wet dream”

The kids are smiling, their bodies are interlaced within the disused tire mound and the coyote snarls staring

via AMERICAN SUBURB X: https://americansuburbx.com/2020/11/mimi-plumb-sheltering-under-the-white-sky.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mimi-plumb-sheltering-under-the-white-sky

Mimi Plumb’s The White Sky (Stanley/Barker, 2020) is the excellent follow-up to her much acclaimed Landfall (TBW, 2018). The White Sky continues to mine her archive of California and the social and psychological terrain of the 70’s American West. The book is somehow a little less about spectacle than Landfall was and in many ways, this adds layers to her vision. Instead of a stellar flow of single overly strong images, which worked as perfect introduction to Mimi’s work, with The White Sky there is something more subtle at play. That is not to suggest the images are less attractive or that they do not stand on their own, but there feels like a more cohesive thread between the images of children and the 70’s Californian landscape that they inhabit than previously seen.