Picturing the sublime.

• Author: Bailey, Ronald
• Position: Briefly Noted - Brief article

"Of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe" is a good definition of sublime. "Picturing the Sublime," an exhibition of 11 large-format photographs at the privately owned Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., scheduled to run through January 13, succeeds in evoking that reaction from viewers by focusing on nature and human interaction.

Battleground Point #14, a 1999 chromogenic print by Richard Misrach, starkly depicts a gracefully curving desert sand dune reflected perfectly in a vast shimmering temporary lake created by a flash flood in Nevada's Carson...