FROM THE GARDEN OF NATURAL AND NOT SO NATURAL WONDERS

This series of color photographs addresses the conflict between our status as a natural species and our impact on the natural environment. Using a rear projection technique, much like that used in earlier cinema, I photograph the human figure against intensely-colored landscape imagery marked by foreboding nuclear power plants, oil tankers and double sunsets. Combining humor with dread, cynicism with hope, the images explore how technology, human consumption and the driving force of American Manifest Destiny are reshaping our concepts of nature and self. Like an invasive, opportunistic weed overtaking a neglected garden, commercial developments expand their reach, replacing rural landscapes with sprawling suburbs, strip malls and industrial parks. Children and adults suffer from asthma and other health problems as the result of polluted air created by manufacturing plants and auto emissions. Politicians consult corporate polluters to determine environmental policy rather than address global warming and curb its impact upon the health of the planet and its life forms.

How do we reconcile our identities as animals and humans, neighbors and trespassers, stewards and violators of the earth? How do we define natural when genetic engineering and cloning reconfigure biology to create new and improved living organisms as if they were name brand products? (The genes of fish have been combined with those of strawberries to create a frost-resistant fruit). Inspired in part by Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, the photographs reference iconic imagery from sources as diverse as religion and advertising, rendering them as omens of an impending crisis. The series reflects on paradises lost, science fictions becoming fact while considering the disturbing prospects for the future of a post-modern planet on the edge of survival.