From the concrete canyons of Manhattan to...

From the concrete canyons of Manhattan to the Grand Canyon’s time-worn rim, the grandeur and spectacle of the United States abound in “From Sea to Shining Sea: A Portrait of America,” a photography exhibit opening Tuesday at the Joslyn Fine Arts Gallery in Torrance.

Japanese photographer Hiroji Kubota spent three years traveling the United States from coast to coast, shooting baptisms and rodeos, holiday parades and Ku Klux Klan meetings. In all, Kubota shot 3,500 rolls of film to document America’s faces, icons, architecture and landscapes, flying more than 400,000 miles by helicopter, plane and blimp, and traveling another 160,000 miles over land.

“This is a subject that many have tried, but no one has done it as extensively in recent years,” said Art Presson, exhibitions designer for the International Center of Photography in New York, where the touring show was organized.

The 105 color images selected for the exhibit represent Kubota’s travels in every state and reveal a contemporary America that is more grand than gritty, more beautiful than bizarre, Presson said. The show is less a critique of modern America than it is a comprehensive document of the American spirit, he said. The result is a largely “uplifting and positive” exhibit, said Barbara Johnson, curator for the Joslyn Fine Arts Gallery.

Most impressive are Kubota’s eight-foot, wide-angle panoramas of subjects such as New York City, Presson said. But America is as poignantly discovered in the face of a 10-year-old cowboy. In the forward to a 174-photo book that accompanies the exhibit, Charles Kuralt writes: “I treasure these photographs. . . . Almost every one of them strikes an old familiar chord in me, a memory of my own 40 years of travel in America, of my own youthful amazement at the variety of my native land, and my own maturing wonder at the durability of its charm.”

The exhibit is free to the public and runs through June 30. Gallery hours are Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Tuesday and Friday, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. For this exhibit only, the gallery will also be open on Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., through June. Information: (310) 618-6341.