If you find yourself in the Bay Area sometime before March 1, head to the Harvey Milk Photo Center, where you can see Lana Z Caplan‘s solo exhibition Oceano—for seven generations, a collection of photos that “tells the story of the Oceano Dunes through the dunes’ successive inhabitants, while interrogating photographic history and convention,” according to the Photo Center. “Co-constructed, performative portraits contrast the historic inhabitants—the Indigenous yak tityu tityu yak tihini (ytt) Northern Chumash Tribe, Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 ancient Egyptian film set, the Modernists, and a colony of Depression-era artist and mystic squatters—with the current ATV riding community that is the source of a public health crisis for neighboring communities.”
Caplan, a Cal Poly associate professor of photography and video, “makes conceptual research and history-based projects that focus on environmental and social justice topics,” according to her bio. The exhibition is based on recent photographic monograph book Oceano (for seven generations) published by Kehrer Verlag, and you can order a signed copy online at buy.stripe.com.
She’s also doing a book signing (3 p.m.) and artist talk (3:30 p.m.) at the Harvey Milk Photo Center in San Francisco on Saturday, Feb. 22. Δ
This article appears in Jan 30 – Feb 9, 2025.