Fred Beckman began making landscape photographs around 1961, having studied art as well as neuroscience. By the time of his 1963 exhibition at the Art Institute, when he was working as a research assistant in neurosurgery at the University of Chicago, he had compiled some 1,000 images. Beckman photographed rural scenes as well as what he called “anonymous architecture” and was most attracted to the effects of light on landscape, as in this image of a church steeple set against a wooded hill. Hugh Edwards featured this image on the exhibition announcement, writing in the press release, “There are no symbols, no clichés, to distort the beauty of simple things simply seen.”