Lucinda Devlin: Frames of Reference

A half century of Devlin's nuanced and fearless chronicles of postwar American culture

This volume offers the first opportunity to view all of Greensboro-based Lucinda Devlin's (born 1947) photographic series in a single volume. The nine thematic series reveal a consistent approach from the 1970s to the present, from her early work as an exponent of New Color photography to her focus on various interiors and her exterior environments and landscapes of the 2000s.

Following the example of Walker Evans, Devlin observes American culture with a critical eye, from the early series Pleasure Ground, offering glimpses into spaces of entertainment (discos, strip bars, fantasy hotels), to later images of operating theaters, autopsy rooms and execution chambers in The Omega Suites. In more recent works, Devlin examines the management of landscapes in Indiana, the Midwest, the Carolinas and Arizona, the changes in Utah's salt flats and Great Salt Lake, and the vast expanses of Lake Huron, to which she dedicated Lake Pictures between 2010 and 2019.