Liminal Dissolve: Imagining Landscapes of Our Uncertain Future

How can telling stories that dissolve the past, present, and future help us imagine the position of the human in relation to the environment?  

In this project, I explore my interest in climate change, our future on Earth, and the human position in landscapes. This is inspired by three sites in the desert of the American West: Bombay Beach, Valley of Fire, and Joshua Tree National Park. During my travels to the three sites I was overwhelmed by the vast emptiness that the locations had; their energies were otherworldly. From the post-apocalyptic sculptures of Bombay Beach, the near complete darkness and unusually shaped Joshua Trees, and the waves of fossilized rocks in the Valley of Fire, I was immersed in the drama of each location, and was drawn to the traces of human presence throughout these places, from vanishing car lights to movements of a human silhouette. Only after shooting at all three locations did I begin to see their interconnectivity. I began to see how my images of these locations were all escaping time. It felt as though I was outside present time and society.  I contemplated the traces of the past that filled these places from skeletons of cars to fossils of sea creatures 200 million years old. I was impressed by the ability for life to thrive in such difficult conditions, and as I stepped foot into what was once an ocean I was engulfed in a world that would have been impossible 200 million years ago, but there I was. This inspired me to imagine a future of impossibilities and uncertainty. What is impossible now may very well be our future, and what is present now may embody and reflect our future. 

Through the combination of fragmented media and capturing human presence through ruins, light, and the juxtaposition of human silhouettes in inhabitable landscapes this project invites the viewer to contemplate the state of our current world.