The illicit thrills and dusty landscapes of suburban California are the raw material of Mimi Plumb’s arresting black-and-white photographs. Girls sneak a cigarette, boys play amid tires, freeways spiral into the sky, and the threat of wildfire looms endlessly. Buildings are bombed out and punks dance all night. Plumb grew up in the Bay Area and taught at the San Francisco Art Institute. Lately, her work from the 1970s and ’80s, which eerily (2018), (2020), and (2021). In Plumb’s eye, the future has already arrived, and the end is already beginning.
