Joel Sternfeld - Oxbow Archive

The subject of Sternfeld's biggest and most beautiful photographs in years is a tract of largely uncultivated and unremarkable land along the Connecticut River in western Massachusetts. Seen over the course of four seasons, the region's meadows, woodlands, flooded fields, and dirt roads are far more picturesque, but in these huge color prints (each more than seven feet wide), their humbleness translates as quiet, hard-scrabble grandeur. If there's an eco-conscious agenda here, it's secondary to Sternfeld's rapt attention to the changing quality of light on the land as it turns from barren to luxuriant and back. Through Oct. 4. (Luhring Augustine, 531 W 24th St. 212-206-9100.)