The Orlando Museum of Art is presenting Wild Path, described as the largest exhibition of Carlton Ward Jr.'s career to date, bringing together twenty years of his work into a single connected story. Ward is a National Geographic photographer and explorer who has spent decades documenting and protecting Florida. The exhibition gathers images of landscapes and wildlife that, in the words of the accompanying text, are hidden in plain sight; none of the sites shown are more than 200 miles from the museum. Many of the landscapes, the text notes, are often mistaken for places far away rather than recognized as Floridian.
Ward's early Florida project focused on Florida cowboys, and he later earned international acclaim for work on preserving the Florida panther. A thread running through the exhibition is the connection between land and water, with aquifers, watersheds, ranchlands, the Everglades, lakes, rivers, swamps and springs described as part of the same narrative. Ward named the Florida Wildlife Corridor and founded Wildpath and the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation to inspire protection of these ecosystems.
The exhibition text states that in Ward's lifetime Florida's population has grown from about 8.5 million residents in 1975 to almost three times that number today, placing increasing strain on the environment. The exhibition is framed as an invitation to see Florida anew and to consider each visitor's own role in protecting it. More information is available at wildpath.com and carltonward.com.
Press release issued by Orlando Museum of Art:
https://omart.org/news/carlton-ward-jr-hidden-lands-and-waters/
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