Bio:

Tom Crawford explores alternative conceptualizations of landscape art.  In his ongoing project, Overlooked, he rearranges satellite photos of residential and industrial districts with Photoshop to create entirely new urban landscapes.  Many are overlaid with carefully camouflaged hand tools that blend in with the urban settings below.  By juxtaposing hand tools with vast residential and industrial districts, his urban landscapes overlap with hammers, saws, and shovels once used to make them.  

Prints from his Under Construction Project display satellite photos of residential communities manually folded into evenly distributed zig-zag ridges. When presented in accordion folds, the imagery changes as viewers see it from different vantage points. Using historical contour maps from the 1950s, his earlier USGS Map Project shows topographic data, exquisite pen-and-ink drawings, and tableaus of unexpected shapes all at the same time. Like Rorschach inkblots, contour lines evoke a myriad of surreal shapes and invite viewers to perceive whatever they are inclined to see. By blurring boundaries between landscape photography, topography, urban design, and abstract art, his work re-imagines how landscapes can be seen as an art form.

In 2025 Crawford was one of four winners of Soho Photo Gallery’s International Portfolio Competition, and he was a finalist under consideration for Photolucida’s Top Critical Mass.  His aerial landscapes have been shown at the Ogden Museum in New Orleans, Cape Cod Museum of Art, and Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts. His art prints have been in galleries in New York, Boston, Washington, Pittsburgh, Dallas, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Portland, and San Francisco.  In addition to his art practice, Crawford has a PhD in clinical psychology from Columbia University.  He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.