“At its core, Oceano asks: How do we reckon with the weight of history in a living, changing landscape? The book does not offer an answer—it does something harder. It forces us to sit with the discomfort of the question, to see with clarity, and to recognize that the fight for land is never just about land. It is about identity, belonging, and the narratives we construct around both….
Oceano invites us to look more closely, to question more deeply, and perhaps, to consider our role in shaping what remains.” – Dana Stirling, FLOAT Magazine
Click on the image to scroll through the gallery
The Book
Published by Kehrer Verlag
Recent Reviews/Press:
FLOAT Magazine
The Candid Frame
FRAMES
feature shoot
New Times
L’oeil de la Photographie
Lenscratch
About Photography
Photobook Journal
Mediterraneo Fotografia
A monograph by Lana Z Caplan
136 pages, 70 b/w and color images, 30x24cm/11.8×9.5″
Contributing essays by
– yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribal Chair Mona Olivas Tucker and son Matthew Goldman
– Hanna Rose Shell, Associate Professor of Critical and Curatorial studies, and Director of the Stan Brakhage Center for Media Arts in Boulder, Colorado.
press release
PDF of Oceano – for seven generations
The Exhibition
Installation Documentation, Dunites, solo exhibition, Gallery NAGA, Boston, 2018
00:14 – “Shed on the passive sands”, 23-minute 4K experimental documentary
05:22 – “Naked to the sun”, 14-minute looping video projection, silent
10:07 – “On the sands become these lilies”, 35mm slide installation
12:43 – “These chromatic gardens”, 360-video virtual reality installation
13:15 – “Dunites”, archival pigment prints
“On the sands become these lilies”, 35mm slide installation, San Diego Art Institute / ICA San Diego
Installation views, OCEANO – for seven generations, solo exhibition, Harvey Milk Photo Center, San Francisco, 2025
More images @Harvey Milk Photo Center
Videos from OCEANO
“Naked to the sun” – excerpt, 6-minute excerpt from 14-minute looping video projection, silent
“Hollywood” – excerpt from “Oceano” – a forthcoming feature-length experimental documentary film
“Shed on passive sands” – excerpt from 23-minute looping 4K video
About OCEANO
Lana Z Caplan giving a 15-minute artist talk about Oceano – for seven generations, Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts, 2024
Lana Z Caplan spent seven years researching and collaborating with the communities of Oceano, California and yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribal leadership to produce a conceptual collection of histories from the Oceano Dunes. These are the dunes of Weston’s modernist photographs; of Cecil B. DeMille’s recently excavated and restored sphinxes from his 1923 Ten Commandments movie set, buried in the sand after filming; of the nearly lost Northern Chumash tribe; of the Dunites – the artists, poets, nudists, and mystics squatting in dune shacks in the 1920’s-40’s – who hosted Weston during his shooting trips; and of the 1.5 million ATV riders who visit each year, inciting a decades-long legal battle with nearby residents over air quality.
Oceano (for seven generations) tells the story of Oceano while interrogating photographic conventions regarding landscape and representation. Black and white landscapes are flipped into negatives, confusing the notion of photographic truth and challenging the male-dominated history of the genre. Portraits are co-constructed performative gestures rather than documents. Multiple modalities of image making reference Modernists, New Topographics, ethnographic typologies, and advertising. Ultimately, Oceano questions the legacies of colonization, photographic history, utopian ideologies, the politics of land use, and the future for the politically charged and environmentally threatened Oceano Dunes.
Print Sales
Fine art prints of single images from Oceano, as well as a limited-edition print portfolio, are available for purchase. Email mail [at] gallerynaga.com or lanaz [at] lanazcaplan.com