Found Rifts: Nature, Distorted

Traditional landscape photography often promises a hyper-reality: pristine, razor-sharp, and totally legible. It offers a version of nature that is tamed, cataloged, and easily consumed. My work inhabits the opposite space. I am drawn to the "rifts"— the fissures and visual gaps where the landscape refuses to settle into a recognizable scene.

These images are an attempt to capture the sensation of the wild rather than its geography. By stripping away the comfort of clarity, I seek to frustrate the impulse to map and categorize the world around us. Instead of a concrete vista, the viewer is presented with a landscape that is dissolving — a visual echo of nature’s inherent indifference to our desire for order.

In an era of environmental precarity, this lack of focus takes on a heavier weight. The abstraction here is not merely stylistic; it is a reflection of a natural world that is becoming increasingly difficult to grasp. There is a quiet anxiety in these blurred horizons, a sense of the familiar slipping into the unknown. Yet, within this unreadability, there remains a dark, persistent beauty. These photographs invite the viewer to stop looking for a subject and instead dwell in the atmospherics of the void.

[Please note: when printed on heavy grade, e.g, 310GSM, textured matte paper such as Hahnemühle German Etching, these images appear very much like charcoal drawings ... and this mode of final presentation is intentional on my part.]