Based on real-world maps and satellite images, my photographs are fictional reconstructions of isolated landscapes. “Mist and Vertigo” is an investigation of the changing landscape and its photographic representation. This series explores the beauty and seduction of remote environments while acknowledging that these near mythical views are both fragile and transitory, and often unobtainable. The photographs present the viewer with images of pristine and unreal grandeur intentionally obscured by clouds, as ominous fissures and chasms reveal themselves below the landscape.
My next series of photographs brings the artificiality of the landscape into the foreground. Built into the mountains are tiny museum displays of deer, snow leopards, and birds. The fauna are trapped in minute preserves within an increasingly artificial landscape. The building structures are no longer hidden; they become simple exoskeletons articulating the architecture that is systematically constructed upon the landscape. As the monumental structures grow, shift, and expand, across the artificial terrain they create a hybrid between the natural world and the array of simulacra invading it. At points the structures are removed from the context of landscape and photographed, revealing the simple fractal geometry present in the object and subsequently present in the landscape. The forms oscillate between a fragile network near collapse and the precise computer generated models that they reference. The photographs illustrate a longing for something perfect and something real, yet it is in the tangible details, the tiny drops of glue and hints of wire, that the impossibility of that desire is realized.
As the work progresses, the photographs are increasingly influenced by museum exhibits and the simulated environments used to display animals and artifacts. Inspired by these dioramas, I have subsequently crafted personal narratives that depict both fear and fascination with the natural world. “Feeding the Deer”, recalls the autumn that my son picked ripe pears and fed them to the wild deer roaming the park. “Predators” speaks to the delicate balance in nature and the futile unfulfilled tension often depicted in museum displays. This photograph also acknowledges the anxiety about the future of such abundant landscapes and becomes a metaphor for contemporary fears. As the predators outnumber the prey, this image also becomes a metaphor for the shifting balance in nature as ecosystems are disrupted.
The grand landscapes and the detailed narrative photographs intersect, as they are both metaphors for uncertainty. The increasingly unreal elements of the photograph create a necessary tension, as the images oscillate between an enticing reality and an obvious incongruence. The photographs become a contemplation of nature and a questioning of its definition.
My next series of photographs brings the artificiality of the landscape into the foreground. Built into the mountains are tiny museum displays of deer, snow leopards, and birds. The fauna are trapped in minute preserves within an increasingly artificial landscape. The building structures are no longer hidden; they become simple exoskeletons articulating the architecture that is systematically constructed upon the landscape. As the monumental structures grow, shift, and expand, across the artificial terrain they create a hybrid between the natural world and the array of simulacra invading it. At points the structures are removed from the context of landscape and photographed, revealing the simple fractal geometry present in the object and subsequently present in the landscape. The forms oscillate between a fragile network near collapse and the precise computer generated models that they reference. The photographs illustrate a longing for something perfect and something real, yet it is in the tangible details, the tiny drops of glue and hints of wire, that the impossibility of that desire is realized.
As the work progresses, the photographs are increasingly influenced by museum exhibits and the simulated environments used to display animals and artifacts. Inspired by these dioramas, I have subsequently crafted personal narratives that depict both fear and fascination with the natural world. “Feeding the Deer”, recalls the autumn that my son picked ripe pears and fed them to the wild deer roaming the park. “Predators” speaks to the delicate balance in nature and the futile unfulfilled tension often depicted in museum displays. This photograph also acknowledges the anxiety about the future of such abundant landscapes and becomes a metaphor for contemporary fears. As the predators outnumber the prey, this image also becomes a metaphor for the shifting balance in nature as ecosystems are disrupted.
The grand landscapes and the detailed narrative photographs intersect, as they are both metaphors for uncertainty. The increasingly unreal elements of the photograph create a necessary tension, as the images oscillate between an enticing reality and an obvious incongruence. The photographs become a contemplation of nature and a questioning of its definition.
Lori Kella
cache/wst.opf.417860.xml
