LAVA STUDIES

This project began on a daily drive to commission sites on the big island of Hawai'i, as I passed through vast lava flows, black and barren, roiling, cracking, folding, oozing, yet frozen, suspended fields sculpted by their violent origin, whispering in that moment of both their origin and potential. Like the photographic moment, suspended and uncanny, as though time had stopped while the lava poured out of the earth. The magnetic pull from those expanses brought me into them, turning my lens downward, into the folds, the fissures, the elemental form of the earth’s origins made sculptural. In contrast to other parts of my practice, these images bring into focus a timeline that is oft overlooked when considering our impact on—and obligations to—our world. Instead of centering ourselves as both the earth’s destroyer and savior, we need to understand that the earth will recover. It will adapt and prevail. I hope these images, when placed in relation to other images of mine, might call attention to our finite place within geologic time, where nature persists beyond our influence. Life continues. It is a constant. We, however, are not.