American frontier : experiments in the desert

American Frontier: Experiments in the Desert is a book by Luca Guido and Emanuele Piccardo. It aims to demonstrate how architecture, photography, painting, films, and art have, at different times, identified the frontier as a field of action to chart new lines of inquiry. American desert spaces emerge as privileged sites for ever-new and more extreme experimentations, precisely because the absence of rules fosters a formal eclecticism free from laws and constraints, except for the relationship with the site and the natural context. This approach was embraced by land artists such as Michael Heizer, James Turrell, Charles Ross, Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, and Dennis Oppenheim, as well as architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Paolo Soleri, John Lautner, Bart Prince, Donald Wexler, and Albert Frey, and photographers including Carleton Watkins, Timothy O. Sullivan, William H. Jackson, Richard Misrach, Lee Friedlander, and Francesco Jodice.