In 1975, Nancy Holt made the film Pine Barrens, shot in the Pine Barrens, an ecosystem that extends across more than seven counties in the state of New Jersey. Holt grew up in New Jersey, a place that remained central to her artistic and personal life. She described it as “a wilderness of sand and pine trees. It’s the forgotten land of the northeastern urban belt: New York is an hour and forty-five minutes away to the north, Philadelphia to the west, Atlantic City to the south.”

Developing from the film, Holt produced the photographic works Pine Barrens: Trees, Pine Barrens: Hoofs, and Pine Barrens: Footprints, each created using individual frames drawn from the moving image. These photoworks extend the film’s sustained attention to landscape, duration, and trace, translating cinematic time into discrete photographic form.