This lavish, oversized full-color book features 150 years of paintings, photographs, tourist and advertising art, and maps that depict California's Great Central Valley. Through text and images, Picturing California's Other Landscape examines the portrayal of the Central Valley over the last 150 years: as promised land, exploitable resource, paradise lost, a source of unexpected life and beauty.

Picturing California's Other Landscape is filled with works by well-known artists including Albert Bierstadt, William Hahn, William Keith, Maynard Dixon, Frank LaPena, Wayne Thiebaud, Ansel Adams, Robert Dawson, Dorothea Lange, Carleton Watkins, and others. However, it is far more than a beautiful art book. Using the region as a backdrop, essays by Central Valley scholars explore more general and provocative questions: whether photography depicts "real" landscapes or invents them; who creates art and for what purpose; how does artistic enterprise—or lack of it—shape the way in which people see their own environment.

Published in conjunction with The Haggin Museum

Reviews

"What a spectacular book! One of the best art books from California I've ever seen. Perhaps THE best. The reproductions are exquisite—and the astonishing range of images: this really tells the central valley story in a way that has never been done."—James D. Houston

"Through the haunting photos of Dorothea Lange, the iconic oil paintings of Daniel DeSiga, the pen-and-ink illustrations of Ralph Yardley, and works by 62 others, the valley's vast landscapes and incongruous cast of characters—Native Americans, agricultural workers—weave a story seldom told."—Hotlist, San Francisco Magazine