Plumb's photographs give shape to what keeps us up at night, to the ambiguous and often overwhelming experience of living in moments of tension and change — Gregory Harris

Blazing Light is published on the occasion of Mimi Plumb's first solo exhibition in a museum (the High Museum of Art in Atlanta) and collects her three most important series – The White Sky, Landfall and The Golden City, and The Reservoir – which together represent a reflection on the anxieties of American life in the waning years of the Cold War. Plumb began photographing in the 1970s, as a teenager, in the San Francisco suburb of Walnut Creek, a period characterized by rapid regional development in connection with global political and economic instability. His early artistic activity was characterized by growing awareness of global warming, the AIDS epidemic, violent conflicts in Latin America and the Middle East, and the looming threat of nuclear war. This atmosphere led Plumb to perceive evidence of such forces in the land, in the built environment, and in the way people behave and relate to each other – concerns that persist in his work today. Plumb's photographs foreground people, giving his images a greater degree of pathos and even at times a certain irony of the absurd. Although it embraces realism, the images have a mysterious quality and stimulate the imagination rather than provide precise information. The publication will include writing by Gregory Harris, Karen Irvine, Lauren Richman, Amanda Maddox and Jordan Bass.