On The Line: The Wall Between the U.S. and Mexico Border
September 4 – 29, 2008
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.”
– Robert Frost (Mending Wall)
Civilizations seem to love walls. They have been building them for thousands of years, either to keep something out, or to keep something in. History tells us that in the end they don’t work.
For the past fifty years, we have been making photographs that address different aspects of human intervention, boundary, and control. In 2006, prompted by the United States government’s plan to build a “Great Wall of America,” we photographed along the entirety of the 1,952-mile border – from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.
We were specifically drawn to the thing itself – the 350 miles of built wall. We worked on both sides of the line, exploring both the physical presence of these barriers, and how the concept of border might be interpreted in the context of the natural landscape.
Diane Cook and Len Jenshel are two of America’s foremost landscape photographers, exploring beauty, boundary and the control of nature for over 50 years. They were married in 1983, and began collaborating in 1991.
In the fine arts, they have received numerous fellowships including the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Graham Foundation, three grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Design Trust for Public Space, and two grants from the National Geographic Society.
Their monographs include Travels in the American West (Smithsonian, 1992), Hot Spots: America’s Volcanic Landscape (Bulfinch Press, 1996), Aquarium (Aperture, 2003), and their latest book, Wise Trees (Abrams, 2017).
Their photographs have been exhibited in museums and galleries in over fifty one-person shows – including the Yokohama Museum in Tokyo, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the International Center of Photography in New York City, to name a few. Their work is represented in over one hundred museums and major collections worldwide. They have been represented in group shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; George Eastman House, Rochester; ICP, New York; National Museum, Smithsonian, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, to name just a few.
In the magazine world, their work has been published in numerous domestic and international publications, including National Geographic Magazine, The New Yorker, Harpers, The New York Times Magazine, Washington Post Magazine, Audubon, Fortune, Bloomberg, Forbes, National Geographic Traveler, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel & Leisure, Sophisticated Traveler, Esquire, and many others.
Len and Diane reside in New York City.