Walter De Maria - The Lightning Field

The official documentation of land art’s most iconic work

Walter De Maria: The Lightning Field presents never-before-seen photographs of this land art masterpiece and its surrounding landscape in western New Mexico. Photographer John Cliett was commissioned by Walter De Maria (1935–2013) and Dia Art Foundation to document this enigmatic artwork over two seasons in 1978 and 1979, but until now nearly all the resulting shots remained in the artist’s archives.

Tracing the course of a typical 24-hour visit to the site, the selection of images shows, for the first time, the rich complexity of site and land. This publication also includes the artist’s 1980 text on the work, “Some Facts, Notes, Data, Information, Statistics, and Statements,” originally published in Artforum; a selection of unpublished primary documents from Dia’s and the artist’s archives, including the photographer’s own notes and reports; and an essay by Dia director Jessica Morgan on De Maria’s complex relationship with photography.