Mark Burns spent five years visiting all 59 of the United States’ national parks. Captured in stirring black and white images, his landscape photography project was completed just in time for the National Park Service’s centennial celebration.
When Mark Burns set out to photograph all 59 national parks for the National Park Service Centennial, he wanted his photos to be timeless. He shot in black and white as a bridge to the early photographers – Ansel Adams, Carlton Watkins, William Henry Jackson – who first captured the beauty of the parks.
Mark Burns shares his experiences with working on the National Parks Photography Project.
Since 2016 is the 100th anniversary of the National Parks Service, this project saw him visit all the national parks in the United States and document each park in beautiful black and white.
The project is currently on display at Houston’s Museum of Natural Science through September 2016.
When photographer Mark Burns was growing up in Houston, he didn’t have many everyday opportunities to gaze upon great mountains and sweeping vistas, but that changed when his family went on vacations. In those family car trips to west Texas and Big Bend and then onto New Mexico or up into Colorado, Burns first began to understand the magnificence of this country’s vast landscapes.
The Houston Museum of Natural Science has been the host for many prominent exhibitions that range from the spiritual to the archeological to The Society of Animal Artists Exhibition, which is an artistic portrayal of the animals that share the planet with us.
Houston-based photographer Mark Burns commemorates the National Park Service’s centennial anniversary on Aug. 25 with ‘The National Parks Project’ at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, on view through Sept. 21.