Science & Tech Quote by John Sexton

Sexton’s line reads like an origin story for an image series, but it’s also a quiet manifesto about what counts as “nature” in late-20th-century America. He isn’t chasing the Space Shuttle for spectacle; he’s looking for a symbol sturdy enough to hold the era’s faith, anxiety, and ambition. The phrase “in my mind” tips his hand: this is less documentary than pilgrimage. He needs an icon, not a subject.

Calling the Shuttle “today’s technology” is deceptively plain. By the time Sexton is working, the Shuttle is already freighted with contradictions: utopian promise packaged in bureaucratic routine; national triumph shadowed by risk; a soaring machine that still depends on fragile, human-scale decisions. Choosing it as a photographic target suggests he’s mapping a new kind of landscape - one where power plants, launch pads, and engineered megastructures have replaced mountains as the sites we go to feel small.

The title Places of Power sharpens the subtext. “Power” isn’t just electricity or thrust; it’s institutional authority and collective belief. Sexton, an educator steeped in photographic tradition, is effectively arguing with the canon: if Ansel Adams framed wilderness as America’s sacred space, Sexton is asking what our sanctuaries look like when the sublime is welded, fueled, and federally funded. The final clause - “that’s where ... came into being” - emphasizes process. The work isn’t born from a grand theory; it emerges from a single, clarifying need: to make a picture that can carry the weight of its moment.