Ångermanälven Project Statement

While in northern Sweden documenting wetlands, I envisioned the potential for an in-depth residency in which I would turn my attention to the natural and cultural history of the Ångermanälven—a river that flows from the mountains of Norway to the Gulf of Bothnia. I returned a few summers later, when days were prolonged, followed by a long and gradual dusk, absent of night, only to emerge as dawn a few short hours later. In this changing daylight, I contemplated the river’s shifting moods, considering both the natural phenomena on the surface of the river and along the shore, as well as the traces of human presence in this remote and sparsely populated landscape—from recently discarded obsolescence left to decay, to rock carvings and fortresses that have endured for thousands of years.

A more obvious human influence upon this landscape is the impact caused by the many hydroelectric dams that now punctuate its course, redefine the river’s boundaries, and form alternate ecosystems as surrounding areas are submerged or exposed. Although I explored the full range of the Ångermanälven, most of the images featured here were captured locally during long walks from my riverside home in a remote village. I aspire to return so that these diurnal, summer images can be juxtaposed with another set captured when the river is under snow and ice in the sparse winter light.

Ultimately, through a combination of photography and writing, this project will encompass seven thousand years of natural and cultural history along the Ångerman river: from the rock carvings at Nämforsen, the rituals performed at the sacred mountain Offerhällan, and the witch trials at Häxberget to the hydroelectric dams of our present age and a vision of a possible if not likely post-human future.

Wet | Land Project Statement

Roads and trails circumvent the wetlands. They lie in the blank spaces of the map. Their terrain has been deemed impenetrable, inhospitable, without value. A wasteland. Perhaps it is their ambiguous nature—being neither strictly land nor water, but both simultaneously—that led to these places becoming sites of ritual praxis. Liminal places for the sacrifical interment of bodies, or the burial of weapons in rites of sympathetic magic. These traditions have died out, but their legacy is preserved, encased in peat. Many wetlands have since been dredged and filled in an attempt to render them “useful.” In the process bog bodies have been discovered and vast stores of carbon have been unleashed into the atmosphere.

A botany curious and rare flourishes in those wetlands still unscathed by the Anthropocene. Hydrophilic turions float without soil in the lagg surrounding the fen. The carnivorous Droseraceae and Sarraceniaceae cling to a carpet of sphagnum atop ombrotrophic bogs. Each annual cycle of growth transformed through slow anoxic decay into layers of peat, a progression from wet into land that commenced in the north as glaciers from the last ice age retreated. First fluid, then quaking underfoot, then stable, becoming a support for trees and fauna. Still, for human beings who venture within, there remains a risk of becoming “bogged-down with, “swamped by” or “mired in” these landscapes. The colloquial usage of these terms to express a frustrated attempt at pursuing our desired goals forever gestures back to the real risks and challenges human beings have faced when traversing wetland topographies.

Noctambulations Project Statement

Throughout the last ten years, I have taken long walks around the neighborhoods where I have lived or the cities I have been visiting, usually waiting to set out on my adventures until very late at night when most people are either inside or asleep. During these long walks, the mind slows down, the body and its senses are foregrounded, and through this subtle, heightened perception, the ordinary, mundane, and overlooked become transfigured, meriting further contemplation. Working with only the limited available light results in images with a contrast, color, and perspective that could not be achieved during diurnal ambulations.

Photography of Place in the Anthropocene

Photographs inevitably capture both moments in time and a particular vantage point—a perspective relative to objects in the world, expressing a range of emotions, ideas, or values. But often these images of human beings and human objects, aim to convey emotions, ideas, or values that are equally human. The photographer, a human, communicates a human perspective.

And perhaps this is to some extent inevitable. The camera does not operate itself. An intentional human agent determines what lies within the frame the moment the photograph is exposed, necessarily determining what information will be cast aside. But is it possible, through photography, to attend to the non-human world, to allow it to speak, to re-present it in some way?  

Place is more than the background that is captured within the frames of a photograph. Often, communicating place entails conveying a mood, a feeling of what-it-is-like to be somewhere, to inhabit. As a social species, our encounter with place is often shaped in part by our experience of other human beings in it. Together, through our shared language, we construct a sense of what a place means—and this is often what makes somewhere a place, rather than just space; place is space rendered meaningful. It can be difficult to see beyond the values and concepts that inform the human significance of a place.

To ask the question again: Is it possible, through photography, to efface the centrality of human concerns, to stand outside of ourselves, and in this moment of ecstasy (from the Greek exstasis, to stand apart from) to capture a place in a way that allows a place to stand for itself—to communicate something of its otherness, to suspend our tendency to prioritize the use of words and images that render it meaningful on our terms. This is what it means for a place to have a mood: it communicates something to us, something that preceded and always exceeds our ability to name and describe, and something that we can best apprehend in and through this ecstasy, through standing outside of ourselves.

However, one of the hallmarks of the anthropocene is that places no longer speak for themselves. They have been so utterly transformed by human presence; sculpted, redefined, and employed to serve our ends. By this logic, a place has value only insofar as it has utility. Photography too can be yet another anthropocentric pursuit, becoming caught in a self-referencing loop that captures one mode of human meaning in order to construct another—a mode of speaking by humans of humans and for humans. Or, it can try to capture this tension between how human beings utilize places to construct and communicate their own concerns and how a place speaks for itself. These days, I find myself opting to pursue the latter.