Widening the Lens: Photography, Ecology, and the Contemporary Landscape

Photographic archives offer a powerful means to narrate history and produce knowledge, but how can they be used in a recuperative way to confront the past? Episode 2 brings together artist A.K. Burns and poet Natalie Diaz to reflect on lost landscapes and cultural erasure, while geologist Marcia Bjornerud invites listeners to view the earth itself as an archive of geologic and human history that can be read and understood as it evolves over time.   —Image: A.K. Burns, before the wake, 2014; © A.K. Burns, Courtesy of the artist

The third episode of Widening the Lens looks at how artists are thinking about the history of public land and the ways in which discriminatory policies have long defined who has access to natural spaces. Ornithologist and writer J. Drew Lanham explores this tension through his family history, while artist Xaviera Simmons, curator Candice Hopkins, and filmmaker Julian Brave NoiseCat convene to reconsider landscapes as sites that can forge solidarity amidst environmental and political concerns. —Image: Xaviera Simmons, Sundown (Number Two), 2018, Courtesy of the artist and David Castillo, Miami © Xaviera Simmons  

Since its inception, photography has helped perpetuate myths about the American landscape that obscure more complex experiences. To get a sense of how these myths influence our relationship to land today, science writer William L. Fox traces connections between mythmaking and human cognition throughout history, while artists Sam Contis, Mark Armijo McKnight, and Raven Chacon discuss how their work counters and breaks these myths by reframing the protagonists and narratives we typically see enacted in the landscape. —Image: Mark A. McKnight, The Grave of Love, 2021, © Mark Armijo McKnight, Courtesy of the artist and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery

Photography can be a tool to visualize bodily attachments to land. In Episode 5, artist David O. Alekhuogie and geologist Kathryn Yusoff engage in a powerful dialogue about how various conditions that define the contemporary landscape are reflected in the human body, shaping how we physically move through and experience our environment. Saretta Morgan expands on this idea through a newly commissioned poem that considers even deeper connections between body and place in which geology, history, and photography interact. —Image: David O. Alekhuogie, Firestation 30, Mom's garden (35.585620, -34.126420, -117.537730), 2021, © David Alekhuogie. Courtesy of Yancey Richardson, New York