The Denver Art Museum (DAM) is proud to announce What We’ve Been Up To: Landscape, a unique selection of photographs that have never been shown to the public, chosen from the DAM’s Photography department’s collection since it was established in 2008. The show features acquisitions from the past 17 years that have never been shared with visitors, on view from June 8 to Dec. 7, 2025, in the Photography galleries on level six of the museum’s Martin Building and included with general admission.

“The word ‘landscape’ means different things to different people, and it’s no surprise that it means different things to different photographers as well. This exhibition represents the variety of ways that landscape photographs help us see and appreciate other times and places and consider where the world has been and what it is becoming. Ultimately, these pictures are invitations to see ourselves and our surroundings with fresh eyes,” said Eric Paddock, Curator of Photography at the Denver Art Museum.

Photographs in the exhibition are informally organized by theme or subject matter, such as Meghann Riepenhoff’s large camera-less image of water and ice, flanked by photographs of rivers and oceans by artist Masao Yamamoto and others. Intimate photographs of nature include works by Linda Conner and Terri Weifenbach as well as a hypnotically detailed tableau by Tanya Marcuse. Landscapes by Christina Fernandez, Patrick Nagatani and Zora J. Murff confront troubling conflicts in our collective history. America’s scenic beauty is celebrated in works by Marion Post Wolcott, William Henry Jackson, Mary Peck and Abelardo Morell. Steve Fitch’s photograph of a radio tower announces the near-universal presence of technology. Challenges of living in a changing, unpredictable world are the subject of photographs by John Ganis, Frank Gohlke and others, while Henry Wessel, Jr. evokes the easy pleasures of road trips.

Other pictures show more troubling aspects of the North American landscape, from the effects of natural disasters to dark moments in the history of slavery and conflicts with Indigenous people. All are bound together by the idea that landscape can serve as an autobiography of the people, societies and natural forces that shape the world over time.

In conjunction with this exhibition, Terri Weifenbach will be giving an Anderman Photography Lecture on Sept. 30, 2025, from 6 p.m. – 7 p.m. in the Sharp Auditorium on the lower level of the Hamilton Building.