All landscapes tell stories. At Luhring Augustine, Brittany Nelson’s series of photographs “Allen Telescope Array” was shot in Shasta County in Northern California, where the SETI Institute has set up a system of radio telescopes searching for extra-terrestrial life. Nelson’s individual portraits of the huge telescopes, dedicated to the lonely mission of listening for something that may not be there, are grouped to look like a forest of metallic monuments to what we humans do not know about the universe. They are displayed as part of a two-person exhibition with California artist Joanne Leonard’s series of photographs from 1976–85 of domestic interiors, honing in on the intensely small details of kitchen counters, pantries, and dining tables. Separated by four or five decades, the photographs on view—straightforward, black-and-white, distinctly unpopulated—create an image of a world in waiting, beholden to a presence that may or may not exist offscreen.
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