Mark Swope (1953-2016), who engaged a straightforward documentary style of photography to capture unromanticized portraits of stark industrial landscapes and suburban sprawl, was born in Los Angeles on May 14, 1953 to photographer John Swope and actress Dorothy McGuire. His father photographed for Life magazine. His mother was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1947 for Gentleman’s Agreement.

Swope lived in Los Angeles, California, where American myths are deeply rooted, and where they slowly turned to dust under the watchful eye of many photographers of the late 20th century. 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,NY. The exhibition, featuring artists such as Bernd and Hilla Becher, Stephen Shore, Nicholas Nixon, Robert Adams and others, 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 artifact. Nature, when it does appear in the image frame, has often been geometrically “pruned”. The artifact 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.

Swope attended Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles and earned his Master of Fine Arts from San Francisco Art Institute.  A lifelong resident of Los Angeles, he started his career as a sculptor and painter. Long interested in photography, he exchanged paint brushes for a camera and began documenting his home city. 

His decades-long photographic exploration ranged from the Los Angeles River to downtown rooftop sign structures to far-flung neighborhoods. His keen eye for composition and disciplined printing earned his work a place in galleries, museums, private collections, and books.

Mark Swope shot film through numerous cameras, digitally scanned his negatives and printed digitally on a large format Epson printer.

IN PUBLIC COLLECTIONS:

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
UCLA Hammer Museum
Santa Barbara Museum of Art
Natural Resources Defense Council City of Hope, Cancer Research & Treatment Center