It may be hard to believe that Kim Keever’s sublime, epic visions, presented on a 6-footwide scale, were actually created in a fish tank measuring a mere 17 inches in depth. Over the course of a month, Keever meticulously crafts a miniature landscape using branches, twigs, bonsai trees, resin and sand. When ready for photographing with his large-format camera, he fills the tank with water and injects it with dyes to help create clouds, storms and turbulent wind. A build-up of algae and sand on the tank’s glass adds to the atmospheric effect, which is further enhanced by carefully orchestrated, dramatic lighting. Poetry as well as atmosphere is Keever’s goal. Once the dye is injected, the artist has 5 to 30 minutes to take as many pictures as he can, ultimately selecting one or two from dozens for transfer to a computer, slight manipulation in Photoshop and then digital printing.

“Palm 62,” 2005, C-print.

But let’s not get caught up in the craft of these powerful images. What makes them so intriguing and moving is not their clever construction, for we feel as though we are witnessing a real event. Rather, it is the sense of the sublime that overwhelms and fascinates us and reminds us of 19thcentury Romantic landscape painting. But Keever’s peopleless landscapes seem to go back to an even more distant past, one that is primordial. Quoting a critic writing about his work, Keever says his pictures convey a sense that “there were mountains, sunsets and ocean shores before there were eyes to see them.”