Carbon

A site-specific work that addressed the encounters between indigenous cultures and European-based civilizations. Organized by Alma Ruiz, the installation focused on the artist's research of the American railroad and Indian reservations. Photo documentation was later published along with eleven short stories in an artists' book titled Carbon.

In 1989 German artist Lothar Baumgarten dedicated six months to following America's railroad tracks across the land with camera, dictating recorder, and pen and notebook, developing an epic project he would call Carbon, which would incorporate several thousand black-and-white and color photographs, large-scale wall drawings, journals, audio tapes, texts, and graphic design and typography studies into an eponymous limited-edition publication now regarded as one of the most beautiful artist's books of the late 20th century. At the Dallas Museum of Art, Baumgarten has installed by far the most expansive presentation of this legendary project yet mounted, including three hugely expansive drawings combining abstracted railway engineering monuments with a polyphony of railway names that command the walls of the vault, more than 100 photographs, and a rich selection of art materials related to the development of the artist's book. Carbon is a poetic look at the impact of the railroad on the geography, people, and history of America. It addresses the beautiful landscapes opened up and then frequently defiled by development, the human accomplishment of settling the land that came at the cost of the displacement and decimation of Native Americans, and the decline of the railroads themselves as the source of powerful metaphor as they became simply industrial transportation.