Landscape 9 (C.59) combines screenprint with a chromogenic photographic print collage — a pairing that brings the documentary of photography into contact with Lichtenstein's print method. The piece depicts water in strong tonal contrast — bold black horizontal forms reading against a lighter ground — the photographic element and the screenprinted strokes working together to arrive at an image that is neither purely photographic nor purely printed but occupies a space between the two. Lichtenstein's use of photographic collage across several of the Ten Landscapes was consistent with a broader interest in the interaction between media that ran through his output in the late 1960s. Photography was the dominant technology of mid-century American culture — the medium through which most people encountered images of the natural world — and by incorporating it into his print series, Lichtenstein placed landscape photography alongside commercial illustration asa way to explore how Americans understood their environment. The strong contrast of Landscape 9 (C.59) — the bold black water-forms against the lighter photographic ground — gives the work a connection to the comic-book work of the early 1960s even as its subject and materials have moved well beyond that source.

By 1967 Lichtenstein had developed a body of work capacious enough to absorb multiple influences and materials without losing coherence, and this work demonstrates that capacity clearly.

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