How to Move a Mountain is Caleb Stein’s photographic essay of the Carrara marble quarry, a series of intimate portraits of robotic
arms and raw marble that offer nuance to today’s debate around artistic authorship and AI and computer-augmented art.
Sent on a commission for Smithsonian Magazine, Caleb Stein traveled to northern Italy to photograph Robotor, a company based in the Carrara quarries that utilizes digital schematics and robotic technology to translate marble into sculpture. The quarry has been mined for millenia, its marble sculpted by generations upon generations of artists and, now, with the introduction of new advancements in technology to the sculptural process, conceptions of artistic authorship come into question.
Photographed in black and white, Stein’s portraits of this site lend an intimate eye to the process. As robotic arms carve topographic maps into the surfaces of the stone, water drips down the steel machinery, the lines mimicking the striations of gray found in the raw marble. This exploration of texture and light reveal the drama unfolding in this quarry—a place where artistic visions find their form, whether assisted by human hand or robotic arm.
Details of the digital schematics that instruct robots to sculpt marble are printed on sheets of tracing paper throughout the book. These spreads both juxtapose and connect Stein’s photographs with the process his images investigate. The artist book is accompanied by an essay by David Campany,
which details the history between photography and sculpture and Stein’s place within this lineage.
Caleb Stein is an artist based in NY. His work has been exhibited and published internationally and is held in the permanent collections of J. Paul Getty Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, NY State Museum, Nguyen Art Foundation, and The Thomas H. Lee & Ann Tenenbaum Family Collection. Books include ‘How to Move a Mountain’ Luhz Press, 2024, Long Time No See (made as an artist duo with Andrea Orejarena), Jiazazhi Press, 2022, and ‘American Glitch’ (made with Orejarena), Gnomic Book, 2024. These books are held in the special collections at MoMA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Rijksmuseum, Stanford University, Yale University, Princeton University, Harvard University, and Center for Book Arts, amongst others. Stein is represented by ROSEGALLERY in LA for his solo work, and for duo work with Orejarena they are represented by Palo Gallery in New York and Vin Gallery in HCMC.
Features on his work have appeared in The New York Times, The British Journal of Photography, Photograph Magazine, Die Zeit, Die Welt, Kunstforum International, Smithsonian, LA Review of Books, ThreePenny Review, The Guardian, Vogue Italia, and i-D Vice, among other places.
Stein’s work with Orejarena is currently on view in their first solo museum show at Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, curated by Nadine Isabelle Henrich, bringing together their work from ‘American Glitch’ and ‘Long Time No See’ with new, site-specific sculpture and video installations. The exhibition will travel to Switzerland this summer. The duo’s work will also be exhibited in a forthcoming group exhibition at Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation in Frankfurt as part of the 2024-2025 FOAM Talent Award.
Stein’s work has been exhibited at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, FOAM, Red Hook Labs, The Curator’s Room, PHMuseum, Belfast Photo Festival, Photo Vogue Festival, Webber Gallery, Vincom Center for Contemporary Art, ROSEGALLERY, Palo Gallery, and Vin Gallery.
Copyright © Caleb Stein and Luhz Press, all rights reserved
