Mimi Plumb: Lookout on Highway 74

Lookout on Highway 74 is a collection of 12 photographs taken by American photographer Mimi Plumb in the 1980s. She often visited the lookout during the holidays while visiting her in-laws in Palm Desert, obsessed with photographing a tiny sliver of road in the vast San Jacinto and Santa Rosa Mountains below. Her interests expanded to include the people, young and old, visiting the site, seemingly mesmerized as she was by the stark beauty of the landscape. Mimi Plumb is part of a long tradition of socially engaged photographers concerned with California and the West. She received a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship in support of her current project, Reservoir. In addition to her Guggenheim fellowship, Plumb is the recipient of the John Gutmann Photography Fellowship (2017), California Humanities grant (2015), California Arts Council Individual Artist Grant (1989), James D. Phelan Art Award in Photography (1986), and the Marin Arts Council Grant (1999). Her photographs are in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Art Collection Deutsche Börse in Germany, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pier 24, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery. Plumb received her MFA in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1986, and her BFA in Photography from SFAI in 1976. She has served on the faculties of SFAI, San Jose State University, Stanford University, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently lives in Berkeley, California. Lookout on Highway 74 is limited to 500 numbered copies, each including a 5x7 inch original print that has been signed by the artist. Read more