McPhee's large and powerfully cinematic photographs capture her observations of a world that she documents but does not pass judgment on. At the same time she challenges viewers to consider our relationship to nature and the land on which we live. Over the course of the her career, McPhee has worked in far-flung parts of the world, including India, Iceland, Costa Rica, and even New Jersey, depicting those places in both a literal and metaphorical sense. In 2003 she accepted a residency in the Sawtooth Mountains of central Idaho, and spent more than two years getting to know the region and its people. As McPhee writes: "we face these issues of ideology no matter where we live in America and they are manifested clearly and poetically in the context of the Sawtooth Valley against the backdrop of the idealized landscape of the American West." The series River of No Return, in which this photograph is included, addresses our conflicting ideas about landscape and land use, investigating our values and beliefs as well as our relationship to nature.

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