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Melville McLean
Born in Ontario in 1952 and trained in drawing and color field painting, Melville McLean approaches landscape with a scientist's eye. He makes several sketches, carefully noting the light and angle of a potential site before arriving at a precise composition. He then sets up his camera to conform to his calculations of space and light to create the image. As a result, his photographs--despite their grand size of 40" x 50" --have a breathtaking clarity even to the outer edges. Note that all of this intense color is captured in the camera, not created in processing.
McLean is part of the contemporary group of large format photographers like Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky and Edward Burtynsky who photograph immense complex space with unprecedented level of detail. McLean's underlying theme is the preciousness of life.
As the New York Observer said of him last year, "His photographs, with their brusque compositions, vivid colors and unremitting focus, make no allowances for wandering attention; they're like magnets for the eye. Only artists make the extraordinary even more so. Aunt Ethel can't do it. Mr. McLean can-- and does."
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