Strangers in the Landscape: Dialogues of Figure and Landscape in the American West (Arundel/Chatwin Series in Contemporary Photography)

Strangers in the Landscape is the first in a series of books that will document the work of photographer David W. Lynch. Lynch traveled the American West between 2003 and 2011, with a Hasselblad film camera and two outlandish costumes: a heat-proof metallic fire suit, and a gown made of bubble wrap. He asked strangers to pose in the firesuit, and for the gown he traveled with a model. The resulting photographs are moving, visually stunning allegories that act as emotional landscapes the viewer can place themselves into. This is his first collection, placing these two memorable bodies of work side by side.

Curator Annie Brulé writes in the accompanying essay, "Skin comes in all kinds of thicknesses. ...Photographer David W. Lynch brings these invisible skins to the surface and sets them loose in the American landscape, creating figures whose interior lives are still veiled in costume, but whose interface with the world around them becomes a highly visible comedy, tragedy, or farce, depending on the mood of the viewer.... Images that speak of the extreme internality of experience strike a balance with the truism that it is our fears and sorrows, our hopes and loves that bind us together in common humanity."