Naturalists examines the wilderness of physical outdoor spaces as well as the wilderness of interior human landscapes. Geologic forces and human drives shape equally our perceptions of the wild. Wilderness can be a swamp as much as a once familiar place rendered unknown and anxious by memory loss.
In looking at the Wilderness Act of 1964 I wondered, “How is wilderness ‘untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain’ if we remain in everything?” It is telling to address phenomena as wilderness when, as with anthropogenic climate change, we shape it. What fascinates me is how conscious or unconscious we are of that act.
Beside my landscape photos, I place figures appropriated from news imagery to be each scene’s “naturalist,” surrogate observers set in wilderness of their making. I use digital imaging software to alter colors, agitate surface, and de-familiarize representational content, to transform images into heightened states, to push a technologically mediated form towards an exhilarating, raw, uncanny space that I associate with wilderness and the sublime.
a swamp as much as a once familiar place rendered unknown and anxious by memory loss.
How is wilderness “untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain,” as stated in the 1964 Wilderness Act, if we remain in everything? It is telling to address phenomena as wilderness when, as with anthropogenic climate change, we shape it. What fascinates me is how conscious or unconscious we are of that shaping.
Beside my landscape photos, I include figures appropriated from news imagery to be each scene’s “naturalist”, surrogate observers and producers of wilderness. I use photoshop filters and faders to manipulate colors, agitate surface noise, and de-familiarize representational content, to transform images into heightened states, to push a technologically mediated form towards an exhilarating, raw, uncanny space that I associate with wilderness and the sublime.
In looking at the Wilderness Act of 1964 I wondered, “How is wilderness ‘untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain’ if we remain in everything?” It is telling to address phenomena as wilderness when, as with anthropogenic climate change, we shape it. What fascinates me is how conscious or unconscious we are of that act.
Beside my landscape photos, I place figures appropriated from news imagery to be each scene’s “naturalist,” surrogate observers set in wilderness of their making. I use digital imaging software to alter colors, agitate surface, and de-familiarize representational content, to transform images into heightened states, to push a technologically mediated form towards an exhilarating, raw, uncanny space that I associate with wilderness and the sublime.
a swamp as much as a once familiar place rendered unknown and anxious by memory loss.
How is wilderness “untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain,” as stated in the 1964 Wilderness Act, if we remain in everything? It is telling to address phenomena as wilderness when, as with anthropogenic climate change, we shape it. What fascinates me is how conscious or unconscious we are of that shaping.
Beside my landscape photos, I include figures appropriated from news imagery to be each scene’s “naturalist”, surrogate observers and producers of wilderness. I use photoshop filters and faders to manipulate colors, agitate surface noise, and de-familiarize representational content, to transform images into heightened states, to push a technologically mediated form towards an exhilarating, raw, uncanny space that I associate with wilderness and the sublime.
