"In 25 years of wandering the American desert, I have never seen sand dunes surrounded by water like we found here in the Carson (Nev.) Sink." -- photographer Richard Misrach

Wilderness is usually a fiction. When Ansel Adams took his breathtaking photographs of the Yosemite Valley in the 1930s ands 1940s, it was already a popular tourist spot, but there were no signs in his photos of visitors and cars, nor even roads and telephone poles. To Adams, that would have spoiled the beauty, writes Andy Grundberg in the coffee-table book "In Response to Place: Photographs from the Nature Conservancy's Last Great Places."

Time passed, and a new generation of landscape photographers decided it was time to include people, their animals and their buildings, according to Grundberg. He asked 12 well-known photographers to choose a site from The Nature Conservancy's "Last Great Places" list and shoot whatever images the photographers wished. Grundberg curated the resulting "In Response to Place" exhibit, which opened at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington in 2001. Fifty of those images, from all 12 photographers, have toured the country since and will open at the Clay Center in Charleston on Saturday, Sept. 16, for a run that extends through Nov. 5.

Featured artists include landscape photographers Terry Evans and Richard Misrach, portrait artists Annie Liebovitz and William Wegman, and cutting-edge art photographers Sally Mann and Lee Friedlander.
It scarcely matters that there are no West Virginia scenes in the show, said Rodney Bartgis, state director of the Nature Conservancy of West Virginia, which, along with Merrill Lynch, sponsors the Clay Center show. "West Virginia isn't out there by itself. It's part of that big picture. The birds that nest here often winter in South America."

IF YOU GO: "In Response to Place" will be on display Saturday through Nov. 5 at the Clay Center. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday toSaturday, noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission, which covers all science and art exhibits, is adults $6.50; children, teachers and senior citizens $5. Call 561-3500.

RELATED EVENT: Curator Andy Grundberg's will speak on "Contemporary Photography and Nature Conservancy's Last Great Places" in the Clay Center's Walker Theater at 6 p.m. Oct 16. The talk is free, but a reception afterwards is $15. To reserve a reception spot, send a check by Oct. 12. Call 561-3500

-- By Bob Schwarz


"I felt obliged to try to better understand my own backyard. The Gunks are actually an extraordinary hunk - outcropping - of rock, and I wanted to show the raw bones of it."
-- photographer Annie Liebovitz, who visited the Shawangunk Mountains in New York.


"I found that the land is shrinking rapidly around Arches and other protected parks and monuments here, just as it is in Egypt, where development is coming to the edge of the Plain of Memphis. It is important to me that these entrances to our sacred places be preserved."
-- Lynn Davis, who photographed the Colorado Plateau in Utah. "I