Viewshed by David La Spina is series of photographs made within the protected “viewshed” of Olana State Historic Site. Each image is created by photographing the ground glass of a large-format camera. Compositions reveal a layering of landscape and shifting color fields. As light changes across the Catskill Mountains, shadows, reflections, and atmosphere transform the view into something both descriptive and abstract. In response to Frederic Edwin Church’s late-life attention to shaping the view itself, La Spina’s photographs function as sketches recording not only the landscape, but the experience of seeing.
"David La Spina’s hauntingly beautiful photographs of the view from Olana echo the shifting play of color and light that the 19th century artist Frederic Church sought to capture in his exquisite, obsessive oil sketches of the Hudson Valley. Frederic Church’s Olana is situated across the Hudson River with a view of his mentor Thomas Cole’s home in Catskill, New York."
— Victoria Johnson, author of 'Glorious Country' a Church biography.
For the special edition, please purchase from ROMAN NVMERALS.
Viewshed is available for pre-order and will ship in Summer 2026.
More Details
Printed by Trifolio, Verona, Italy.
8” x 11”
44 pages; 25 images
Sewn soft cover book with drop spine
Each copy includes a die-cut facsimile of a pencil drawing by Frederic Church.
Text by David La Spina
Signed and editioned
Design by Emily Sheffer
Published by Dust Collective
Spring 2026
ISBN 979-8-9893350-9-1
David La Spina, born 1981, Cincinnati, is a Brooklyn and Germantown-based artist whose practice explores local historiography, examining how the built environment carries the imprint of past generations into the present. His work is informed by a sustained interest in the cultural transition to modernism and a deep engagement with photographic archives.
For over two decades, as the Director of Esto, he has stewarded the work of architectural photographer Ezra Stoller, shaping his understanding of preservation, visibility, and historical narrative from a visual archive. La Spina studied photography at Rochester Institute of Technology and earned his MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2009. In 2014, after contributing as a photographer, he became a staff photo editor for The New York Times Magazine. In 2015, he co-founded ROMAN NVMERALS, an artist-centered photography imprint and print studio, with Michael Vahrenwald. His other recent work includes 14 Doubles/Fantasy Baseball, an evolving multi-medium exploration of America’s Pastime and Emeralders, an ongoing serialized photographic novel set in Walt Whitman’s Antebellum Brooklyn.
Viewshed by David La Spina is series of photographs made within the protected “viewshed” of Olana State Historic Site. Each image is created by photographing the ground glass of a large-format camera. Compositions reveal a layering of landscape and shifting color fields. As light changes across the Catskill Mountains, shadows, reflections, and atmosphere transform the view into something both descriptive and abstract. In response to Frederic Edwin Church’s late-life attention to shaping the view itself, La Spina’s photographs function as sketches recording not only the landscape, but the experience of seeing.
"David La Spina’s hauntingly beautiful photographs of the view from Olana echo the shifting play of color and light that the 19th century artist Frederic Church sought to capture in his exquisite, obsessive oil sketches of the Hudson Valley. Frederic Church’s Olana is situated across the Hudson River with a view of his mentor Thomas Cole’s home in Catskill, New York."
— Victoria Johnson, author of 'Glorious Country' a Church biography.
For the special edition, please purchase from ROMAN NVMERALS.
Viewshed is available for pre-order and will ship in Summer 2026.
More Details
Printed by Trifolio, Verona, Italy.
8” x 11”
44 pages; 25 images
Sewn soft cover book with drop spine
Each copy includes a die-cut facsimile of a pencil drawing by Frederic Church.
Text by David La Spina
Signed and editioned
Design by Emily Sheffer
Published by Dust Collective
Spring 2026
ISBN 979-8-9893350-9-1
David La Spina, born 1981, Cincinnati, is a Brooklyn and Germantown-based artist whose practice explores local historiography, examining how the built environment carries the imprint of past generations into the present. His work is informed by a sustained interest in the cultural transition to modernism and a deep engagement with photographic archives.
For over two decades, as the Director of Esto, he has stewarded the work of architectural photographer Ezra Stoller, shaping his understanding of preservation, visibility, and historical narrative from a visual archive. La Spina studied photography at Rochester Institute of Technology and earned his MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2009. In 2014, after contributing as a photographer, he became a staff photo editor for The New York Times Magazine. In 2015, he co-founded ROMAN NVMERALS, an artist-centered photography imprint and print studio, with Michael Vahrenwald. His other recent work includes 14 Doubles/Fantasy Baseball, an evolving multi-medium exploration of America’s Pastime and Emeralders, an ongoing serialized photographic novel set in Walt Whitman’s Antebellum Brooklyn.
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