Nancy Holt, Texas Claims (1969)
Installation view: Nancy Holt: Power Systems, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, 2025
Seven inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 126 format transparencies
15 x 15 in. (38.1 x 38.1 cm) each
Edition of 3 + 1AP

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Installation view of seven small square photographs on a white gallery wall

Nancy Holt, Texas Claims (1969)
Installation view: Nancy Holt: Power Systems, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, 2025
Seven inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 126 format transparencies
15 x 15 in. (38.1 x 38.1 cm) each
Edition of 3 + 1AP

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Nancy Holt, Texas Claims (1969)
Seven inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 126 format transparencies
15 x 15 in. (38.1 x 38.1 cm) each
Edition of 3 + 1AP

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

a flooded drainage with a barbed wire fence cutting through the water in a bucolic landscape

Nancy Holt, Texas Claims (1969)
Seven inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 126 format transparencies
15 x 15 in. (38.1 x 38.1 cm) each
Edition of 3 + 1AP

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Nancy Holt, Texas Claims (1969)
Seven inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 126 format transparencies
15 x 15 in. (38.1 x 38.1 cm) each
Edition of 3 + 1AP

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

a flooded drainage with a barbed wire fence cutting through the water in a bucolic landscape

Nancy Holt, Texas Claims (1969)
Seven inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 126 format transparencies
15 x 15 in. (38.1 x 38.1 cm) each
Edition of 3 + 1AP

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Nancy Holt, Texas Claims (1969)
Seven inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 126 format transparencies
15 x 15 in. (38.1 x 38.1 cm) each
Edition of 3 + 1AP

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

a green flat field with a telephone pole sticking up out of the right side of the frame

Nancy Holt, Texas Claims (1969)
Seven inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 126 format transparencies
15 x 15 in. (38.1 x 38.1 cm) each
Edition of 3 + 1AP

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Nancy Holt, Texas Claims (1969)
Seven inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 126 format transparencies
15 x 15 in. (38.1 x 38.1 cm) each
Edition of 3 + 1AP

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

red and orange flowers growing in a dry landscape

Nancy Holt, Texas Claims (1969)
Seven inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 126 format transparencies
15 x 15 in. (38.1 x 38.1 cm) each
Edition of 3 + 1AP

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Nancy Holt, Texas Claims (1969)
Seven inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 126 format transparencies
15 x 15 in. (38.1 x 38.1 cm) each
Edition of 3 + 1AP

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

red and orange flowers growing in a dry landscape

Nancy Holt, Texas Claims (1969)
Seven inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 126 format transparencies
15 x 15 in. (38.1 x 38.1 cm) each
Edition of 3 + 1AP

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Nancy Holt, Texas Claims (1969)
Seven inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 126 format transparencies
15 x 15 in. (38.1 x 38.1 cm) each
Edition of 3 + 1AP

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

image of a thistle with a yellow flower

Nancy Holt, Texas Claims (1969)
Seven inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 126 format transparencies
15 x 15 in. (38.1 x 38.1 cm) each
Edition of 3 + 1AP

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Nancy Holt, Texas Claims (1969)
Seven inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 126 format transparencies
15 x 15 in. (38.1 x 38.1 cm) each
Edition of 3 + 1AP

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

view of light cracks in asphalt

Nancy Holt, Texas Claims (1969)
Seven inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 126 format transparencies
15 x 15 in. (38.1 x 38.1 cm) each
Edition of 3 + 1AP

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

1966—1969

Texas Claims

Nancy Holt
1969
Seven inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 126 format transparencies
15 x 15 in. (38.1 x 38.1 cm) each
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Photography was an essential medium for Nancy Holt. The process of viewing a particular place through the camera enabled Holt to share a singular way of seeing with others. Her photographic series operate as visual poems reflecting on the ways place is structured by the human impact on the landscape. In Texas Claims (1969), one of Holt's earliest photographic works, she shows textures of an asphalt roadway and an open field, as well as details of thistles, grasses, and flowers in the Texas countryside. Two images in the series show a flooded drainage ditch bisected by a barbed-wire fence; a reminder that nature does not conform to rules of land ownership and private property.

See Also