Mark Swope (1953-2016) was a photographer who lived in Los Angeles, California, a land where American myths are deeply rooted, and where they have slowly turned to dust under the watchful eye of many photographers. An America of rampant urbanization, of “non-places”, extensively portrayed by American photography in the 1970s.

Mark Swope’s work, although dating from the 1990’s and 2000’s, is very much in line with the investigations of photographers displayed together at the now-famous New Topographics exhibition, hosted in 1975 at the George Eastman House in Rochester, featuring artists such as Bernd and Hilla Becher, Stephen Shore, Nicholas Nixon, Robert Adams… The exhibition was a turning point in the history of photography in that it witnessed, in a deliberately documentary style, changes in the contemporary landscape. All of Swope’s work reflects the same interest in places dominated by artefact. Nature, when it does appear in the image frame, has been geometrically “pruned”. The artefact itself - whether work of architecture or billboard - is depicted as an obsolete relic of a bygone age, where all that remains intact is the palm-tree lining of the city’s broad avenues.

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SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Foliage Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (2012)
The Los Angeles River Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (2010)
Paint & Memory - Photographs of New Orleans 2003-2005 Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (2006)
Elysian Fields Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (2005)
Foliage Venice Arts Gallery, Venice, CA (2004)
Selected Work Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (2003)
L.A. Sign Structures Museum of Neon Art, Los Angeles, CA (2003)

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
A New Cosmopolitanism Cal State Fullerton University, CA (2008)
Swope X Four Venice Arts Gallery, Venice, CA (2008)

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA
N.R.D.C., Santa Monica, CA