Vermont is a place Mark Katz returns to with his camera, often revisiting the same farms, roads, and mountain views. A familiar barn can become a different photograph after an overnight snowfall. Horses can turn an open pasture into a scene full of personality. A passing bank of fog can leave just enough of a building visible to make its relationship with the surrounding land feel newly apparent.
Based in Marblehead, Massachusetts, Mark photographs Vermont frequently, with the Mad River Valley occupying an important place in his work. His Vermont landscape photography grows out of that repeated attention: recognizing a place, then noticing what light, weather, or movement has changed. The photographs gathered here offer a way into that experience, from Warren and Waitsfield to the wider Vermont landscape.
View the Vermont Collection to explore available artwork, or follow the stories below to learn how individual photographs came about.
The Mad River Valley: photographing Warren and Waitsfield
In Mark’s Mad River Valley photography, the mountains often share the frame with evidence of everyday life: a fence dividing a field, a barn set against a wooded slope, horses grazing, or a road winding between buildings. These subjects give the landscape scale and a human connection. They also make it particular. A farm is more than an attractive shape when the surrounding hills, season, and light describe its place in Vermont.
Warren appears in the winter scene of Split Fences, while downtown Waitsfield provides the curves of Taking it Slow. Seen together, these photographs move between open countryside and village life. One draws the eye across a field toward the mountains; the other follows a snow-lined road through town. Both find a composition within an ordinary setting that changes with the weather.
That connection between landscape and the simplest elements of living runs through Mark’s 2023 reflections on his photography. Farms, shelter, roads, and animals are recurring subjects because they bring the outdoors into contact with daily existence. Vermont offers many ways to observe that relationship without needing a grand or unfamiliar destination every time.
Stories behind the Vermont photographs
Split Fences: returning to a familiar place in Warren
The location in Split Fences is one Mark photographs almost every time he passes. On this visit, fresh snow and beautiful morning light brought the barn, split-rail fences, and Green Mountains together. The photograph depends on their relationship: the fence carries the eye through the foreground, the barn anchors the scene, and the mountains extend it into the distance.
Repeated visits are part of the story. Knowing the place did not exhaust its possibilities; it made a change in conditions worth noticing. Snow simplifies the field and reveals the fence’s rhythm, while the light gives the mountains a gentle warmth. Split Fences received Best in Show in Photography at the 2022 Marblehead Festival of Arts. The photograph and Mark’s artist note offer a closer look at this much-revisited Vermont scene.
Envy: personality in a snowy pasture
Mark encountered the horses in Envy while driving up Route 17. The scene stayed with him for the personalities and relationships he saw in it:
“The way the horses were positioned, the dusting of snow on their backs, and the one horse that didn’t want to participate—it all felt very human to me. Sometimes I feel like the observer, too.”
— Mark Katz
The black-and-white photograph holds both movement and stillness. The horses’ differing tones help separate them from the snowy ground, and the stable gives the watching horse its own place within the scene. Mark counts Envy among his personal favorites and included it in his 2024 Vermont-themed solo exhibition. Explore Envy and its story to see how a roadside encounter became one of his defining Vermont photographs.
Vermont Countryside: a horse farm after overnight snow
Vermont Countryside comes from one of Mark’s favorite Vermont horse farms. A light snowfall overnight had dusted the mountaintops. In the morning, grazing horses, open pasture, and soft light completed a landscape he describes as closely connected to his own sense of Vermont.
Compared with the activity in Envy, this photograph is spacious and settled. Small figures occupy a broad field beneath the mountain ridge, allowing the surroundings to remain a substantial part of the image. It is a useful pairing: the same kind of subject can produce a very different mood. Vermont Countryside was also included in the 2024 Vermont-themed solo exhibition.
Winter Escape: when weather transforms the familiar
Mark had driven past the location of Winter Escape many times before the conditions in this photograph appeared. Snow from a storm had built into deep drifts, trees were heavily covered, and fog still lingered. The structure seemed to merge with the landscape around it.
Here, atmosphere changes the balance between building and setting. Pale snow and softened distance leave the warm wood as a quiet point of attention. The Winter Escape artist note describes the combination that made this particular morning different. Alongside Split Fences, it shows why returning to a known location can be as productive as seeking a new one.
Vermont through the seasons: snow, fog, and morning light
Winter gives many of these photographs their visual clarity. Snow covers detail in the ground, outlines branches, and makes fences or buildings easier to distinguish. Fog can soften the hills beyond them. Yet winter does not produce just one mood: the clear mountain backdrop of Vermont Countryside feels different from the enclosed, misty world of Winter Escape.
Weather also creates less predictable structures. In the photo essay Layering Up, Mark recorded alternating bands of light and dark cloud over the Mad River Valley after a March snowstorm. The cloud pattern became an active part of the landscape. Looking above the obvious subject can change what a photograph is about.
Taking it Slow: winter in downtown Waitsfield
Taking it Slow brings Waitsfield Vermont photography into the village itself. The road’s successive curves guide the view between snow-covered edges, buildings, and bare trees. Its black-and-white treatment emphasizes the dark tracks against the pale road. The setting is inhabited and recognizable, with winter shaping the way the eye travels through it.
Canopy: autumn light in the Mad River Valley
In Canopy, afternoon sun illuminates peak fall foliage in the Mad River Valley. Orange and red leaves spread overhead, while dark branches give the color a framework. The road and barn beneath the trees keep the photograph connected to the rural setting rather than letting foliage become an isolated display.
Fall in this body of work extends beyond peak color. September Colors records the early part of the season; Lost explores post-peak orange; and Prelude to Winter turns toward a Vermont farm in stick season. These transitions make a richer sequence than any single autumn view. Mark’s essay on photographing fall considers the season across Vermont and Marblehead.
Morning offers another set of possibilities. Morning Grazing was photographed around 5:30 a.m. on a cool summer morning in the Mad River Valley, with bright skies and distinctive clouds. Alongside the winter farm photographs, it shows that the connection between animals, fields, and mountains continues through changing seasons.
A photographic approach built on simplicity and observation
Mark’s artist statement describes an approach attentive to exposure, movement, contrast, and negative space. Reducing distractions allows a subject’s character to emerge. In the Vermont photographs, that might mean open snow around a horse, a broad stretch of field beneath a mountain, or fog reducing the detail behind a barn.
Negative space gives the subject room and helps establish its scale. Notice how small the horses appear beneath the ridge in Vermont Countryside, or how snow separates the rails in Split Fences. These are different ways of organizing a landscape so the viewer can enter it without every part competing for attention.
Back Roads: following the line through a working landscape
In Back Roads, a bend in the pavement draws the eye toward a red barn and silos. Muted surroundings give the painted road lines and farm buildings their emphasis. It is a distinctly rural scene built from familiar elements, with atmosphere influencing how much of the distance remains visible.
This is a helpful way to explore the collection: look first at what holds your attention, then at what supports it. The strongest subject may be a building, an animal, or the direction of light. The setting supplies the relationships that make the photograph belong to a particular place.
Beyond the valley: Champlain Siren
Champlain Siren broadens the view from farms and enclosed valleys to open water. A sailboat and a light on the breakwater sit beneath distant Adirondack ridges, with sunset giving the mountains pink and blue tones. The scene looks across toward mountains beyond Vermont, placing the state’s lake landscape within a wider geography.
The subject changes, but the visual concerns remain familiar: restrained elements, layers of distance, and a moment when light gives a known landscape an unexpected character. Exploring beyond the Mad River Valley makes those continuities in Mark’s Vermont fine art photography easier to see.
Vermont photographs in exhibitions and in Warren
Rooted in Vermont, Mark’s solo exhibition at the Marblehead Arts Association, ran from March 2 through April 14, 2024. His exhibition history also includes the 2022 Green Mountain Photo Show at the Red Barn Galleries at Lareau Farm in Waitsfield. Together with the recognition for Split Fences, these provide context for a Vermont body of work developed over repeated visits. See Press & Recognition for exhibition records and original sources.
Art in the Village in Warren is part of Mark’s Vermont representation, connecting the photographs with the region they depict. The representation page provides gallery details for exploring the work in person.
Explore the Vermont Collection
These eight photographs introduce a larger body of work. Follow an image to read its artist note or explore available print options. For Vermont wall art and Vermont photography prints across seasons and subjects, the collection brings the artwork together in one place.