January 6, 2010

I have recently started blogging to show a few new series I have been working on in New Mexico.

I am interested in looking at the world how it was intended to be, not how man has distorted it.  I have to look at our world with blinders in order to see what I like.  I feel we have subtly and obviously altered our landscape; we no longer know how the earth truly looks.  Our perception of the natural world is a warped view of strip malls and concrete. We have come to understand nature as the spaces in-between. 

 

Civilizations have lived harmoniously with their environment when they have seen themselves as a part of the earth, not ruler of it, but the present humanity tends to not follow this way of thinking. My photographs seek to show the human connection with the earth as a symbiotic relationship not parasitic.

 

My recent move to the Southwest has inspired this new series. The intriguing landscape and open spaces that define New Mexico are inspiring beyond words. Being from the South where development is seen along every inch of highway and interstate, it’s been intoxicating to see an American landscape that is not completely developed.  This landscape gives me a sense of freedom and adventure. I want to incorporate the figure as part of desert, tree, water, air, light, all aspects of the natural world through the beauty of the human connection rather than the ugliness that is most commonly seen.

 

I will shoot all photographs on 4×5 film with a large format camera. I will print each image the size of the negative using palladium printing, an alternative process, where I expose each print in nature using the sun instead of the darkroom. The use of sunlight in my development process is an important part of my project because I want to continue the positive use of nature through the entire making of each image especially given that Santa Fe experiences 300 days of sunlight.

The first photograph is titled “Wind” and is a self portrait of myself on the mesa behind my house. 

  Please post any comments and questions as the series evolves.