Staging Nature

The project Staging Nature gives a complex view of the natural world as it is shaped and defined by human interpretation and intervention. As humans, we don’t peer from within into that which is outside, as in looking through a window; rather, in looking, we actively generate an image of the world that is synthesized via an intercommunication between the eye and the mind. I am utterly fascinated by the possibility of giving form to that resulting image; an undertaking made uniquely possible by the photograph, for photography, viewed as a reflection of sight, reveals to us the subtle and nuanced ways in which thought colours vision. In the creation of these images, I sought out and constructed scenes and subjects demonstrative of such transformative, “coloured” seeing, as this visualization reveals that we cannot seem to agree on how we should relate to the natural world. Instead, we commonly appear to hover between the desire to bend nature to our will and a longing for the wild – to possess or admire, conquer or embrace. Against the backdrop of the present moment, wherein nature is rapidly disappearing around us at a hitherto unprecedented rate, the need for careful observation and reflection is more urgently needed than ever before. Above all else, I would like for these images to mediate a space through which such reflection can occur.