Jane Hilton, Shiprock, 2006. Courtesy of the Artist.
New York City’s Palo Gallery presents “Lightfall,” its second solo exhibition of works by acclaimed British photographer and filmmaker Jane Hilton. This collection features 12 photographs and one video that explore the people and places shaping Hilton’s 30-year journey in the Western United States. It is both intimate and insightful; quiet yet meaningful — the works collectively capture the solemnity in one of the country’s most iconic regions, from its sweeping landscapes to its built infrastructure.
At the core of the exhibition is Hilton’s exploration of light as a symbolic force across the West. This series reveals the beauty of sunlight enveloping the mountainous terrain and the glow of colorful street lights decorating urban skylines, centering the people and places illuminated by the many forms of light that saturate the world around us. From miles of open highway and lush farmland, Hilton spotlights the particularities and nuances that define each unique part of the West. Through this lens, she captures an iconography that is so unequivocally and beautifully American.
The photographs in “Lightfall” emerge from Hilton’s extensive travels across the American West, from the interior landscapes of Kansas and Colorado to the coastal expanses of Los Angeles. Over three decades, her sustained engagement with the West cultivated her ability to illustrate its ambience in her work, creating art from everyday sights. Each image carries a somber familiarity and warm cultural nostalgia tied to each part of the country’s iconic Western territory. Cowboys on horseback, for example, remains an iconic symbol of the region — whether traversing rocky hills or rendered in glowing neon signage. In this series, Hilton captures this motif in both its natural and fluorescent forms, unified by one meaningful quality: the illuminative power of light. Sunlight guides the rider and his horse through the terrain, while the vibrant neon casts the cowboy’s image into the night sky.
The exhibition includes select pieces from “Dead Eagle Trail,” Hilton’s renowned series of cowboy portraiture featuring the ranchers, buckaroos and cowpunchers from the Great Basin to the Southwest. Paired with her landscape photography, these portraits spotlight themes from the region’s cultural legacy, offering an earnestly candid meditation on a fading tradition caught between history and a rapidly modernizing world. “Lightfall” is not merely a visually compelling survey on the American West; it is a dialogue between the land and the viewer, inviting audiences to encounter the people and places that exist between the country’s iconic Western highways and mountain vistas.
At the heart of the exhibition are Hilton’s landscapes. In these prints, Hilton presents an opportunity for viewers to immerse themselves in the unique cultural and personal stories embedded in the land itself. The recurring motif of light serves as Hilton’s narrative fuel, illuminating the quiet moments between mountains, along empty streets and deep within the terrain. From the high plains and the rocky mountains to the California coastline, the West embodies one of the most beautifully diverse geographic regions in the world.
