Matt Black

New World Atlas: California & Nevada

May 1 — June 27, 2025

Robert Koch Gallery is pleased to present New World Atlas: California & Nevada, the third solo exhibition at the gallery by American photographer Matt Black. Known for his visceral approach to documentary photography, Black turns his focus to the evolving climate of the American West, using thermal and infrared imaging to examine the effects of extreme weather events and the vulnerabilities of a rapidly shifting landscape.

New World Atlas is organized in a series of 17 chapters, one for each state lying west of the 100th meridian. This exhibition presents California & Nevada, the first two chapters of this larger body of work. In this series Black departs from conventional photographic representation and incorporates technologies that extend human perception. Thermal imaging makes the invisible visible, allowing viewers to witness heat as a signifier of change, from drought and fire to evaporation. Infrared photography distinguishes the living from the inert, exposing a shifting terrain beneath what once seemed immutable.

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Charles Leander Weed
Carleton E. Watkins
Eadweard Muybridge

Mammoth Plates

May 1 — June 27, 2025

The Robert Koch Gallery presents Mammoth Plates, an exhibition of early photographic images of California by Charles Leander Weed (1824–1903), Carleton E. Watkins (1829–1916), and Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904). Shown in conjunction with Matt Black’s exhibition, New World Atlas: California & Nevada, the exhibition draws a connection between 19th-century images of grandeur and a present-day view shaped by environmental fracture. The exhibition includes rare prints, among them Watkins’ works that may not have been known to exist when the Getty Research Institute compiled its authoritative catalog of his work, published in 2004, as well as prints for which few examples are known to exist. The exhibition will feature mammoth prints dating from 1864 through 1883.

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