For a new monograph, Private, Kuhn's fifth publication for Steidl, the photographer focused her gaze on the bleached tones and broad expanses of light that bathe the Mojave Desert, a few hours drive from her Los Angeles home. In a series of thoughtful and intimate compositions, Kuhn catalogs flora and fauna, most of it coarse-grained and engineered for survival. Landscapes are windswept and invite introspection. Hard light falls on no-nonsense structures that are built to last. Punctuated throughout these pages are female nudes, bathed in the same supple light and shadow, their faces mostly serene. As in previous series by Kuhn, the artist employs glass as a secondary lens and means of filtration and dissolution of identity, shooting her subjects from outside of structures, allowing their features to soften and meld with the reflections of the surrounding terrain. The sequencing of the images in Private is expertly tuned to tease out the complex relationship between the vulnerability of the nude female form and the rugged natural context which Kuhn employs as a backdrop. Kuhn's models are mostly supine, the softness of their luminous skin a foil and a complement to the jagged, indomitable geology of the landscape in which they find themselves. Against this backdrop, the self is by turns magnified and diminished into a dreamy, sensual phenomenology.--Kevin Greenberg "The Last Magazine "