Initially I was calling this project Life on Mars. The thought at the core of the work was something along the lines of, "This desert landscape reminds me of visions of Mars. People are terrified that the world will stop being habitable and so are investigating colonizing Mars or the moon. But actually this planet has a really long way to go before it's harder to live here than it would be to live off-world. Before we figure out how to adapt to those environments, we could probably more easily figure out how to adapt to what the Earth has in store for us." 

Not surprisingly, I began with a strategy I have employed in other projects of taking people out of one context and putting them into a new one. So I took figures from other photographs of mine and put them in the desert, to explore what "life as usual" looks like in that context. But eventually decided that clearly there was no way it could be life as usual in that landscape and I couldn't fathom what in fact it might look like, so present day human society and the futuristic desert landscape I was proposing had to have a different relationship. 

My next approach was to connect the two together as if the desert was the larger map, and the present day scenes were like atlas insets showing a detailed view of a small part of that map. But that was still the wrong relationship. Keeping the two images physically separate would make clear the distance between the two realities, but I chose the specific images so that there was still a visual relationship between the two. Mounting the present day scenes behind acrylic further emphasized the two spaces as distinct, and at the same time was a good metaphor for the idea that we see ourselves as safely within a bubble doing what we want, and made reference to plastic's role in the current state of the environment. But mounting acrylic prints meant that the larger images had to have enough structure to handle their weight. I had printed on aluminum once before. It is a much more sustainable process than mounting on foam core, and has the advantage that it doesn't need glass. I liked the idea that the visions of society were behind protective plastic, but the raw landscape was exposed and vulnerable. 

The dye sublimated aluminum image is incredibly durable, but still, if you really want to, you could scratch it or otherwise damage it through your actions. It was really satisfying once I arrived at a physical form that worked visually with the images I wanted to make, but also stood as a metaphor for what the images were trying to say. The planet is going to change, it may dry up and become completely desert-like, but it also endures and will continue to do so. We think we can do what we want without thinking about the consequences, but everything we do is constantly reshaping the earth itself. So perhaps, if we want to continue living here, we need to rethink what we're doing in light of the Earth's evolving geology rather than seeing how we want to live as being the constant. Ultimately that was the story I was telling in the images, but also through their physical composition..

The work was inspired by time spent in the US desert Southwest. Previously I had traveled primarily in Europe, on beach vacations, or to cities. Finally spending time in the Southwest had a profound impact on how I viewed our relationship to the physical being of the planet. The larger images in this series were all taken during this time. The smaller images are all from my personal archive. As the project took form I needed pictures of humans occupying and living in the world to contrast with the majestic landscapes, and I had tens of thousands to choose from since that is what I most typically focus on.

The painted frames were one of the last aspects of this project to come into focus. I tried to envision putting the images in traditional frames and the idea of putting such a final and defined framework around them felt entirely wrong for a project rooted in the ongoing nature of the earth's geological development. The worlds that I was evoking needed to extend beyond the limits of my images. Painting the frames seemed like the right choice from several perspectives. I felt it needed to be conscious of materials given the subject of the work. Wood is so iconic as a substance that using wooden frames made perfect sense. I decided to paint them as a kind of blurry spilling of the world within them indefinitely beyond, suggesting that we don't know where the end is, and perhaps there is never one, and we don't know what the future will look like. The desertscapes in this work stand in for one near future vision of what more and more of the planet may look like, but we can't even begin to conceive what may come after that. Finally, hand painting felt right, since the work is about how as humans we decide to work in concert with the natural world.

I hope the images will inspire viewers to try to reframe climate change and how we address it in their minds. Not necessarily according to the vision or even the questions asked in this work, but to be constantly looking for new angles. So much of what societies are doing now is based on the idea that we should be able to have all of the creature comforts more or less as we are accustomed to them, and so we look for ways to enable our current lifestyle to continue, often by changing the landscape even more, always forcing it to conform to our whim. And I want to suggest trying out an earth first perspective. One in which the natural world is the given, the immovable object, and we adapt ourselves to its contours. Conversations about climate change often lead to warnings of apocalypse and visions of total destruction, and I want to suggest instead that we think of it only as self-destruction. Whatever, the planet might endure and be beautiful, only we will have failed to figure out how to live in it.

Each image starts with a desertscape. The process of sorting through years of archives is pretty laborious, but to a great extent the archive lives inside my head. So I could look at a particular whitesands landscape and say, I think this picture would work with the boat and potted plant images I took in Georgetown, Grand Cayman, and go back and find that set of images to test out (Setting Sail). Once I've found a combination that seems to work in photoshop, I print out both pictures. I bought acrylic squares and used spray adhesive to mount the smaller scenes behind the acrylic and simulate the final effect. In a lot of cases I found pictures that worked together as they were, but occasionally I had to go into photoshop and tweak a sky a bit so that they could line up perfectly. It took me a long time to figure out how to handle the frames, so I had created all of the images at least as two part combinations before the frames and final decisions on materials came into focus.

My next project is a return to looking at cities and culture, but for the first time as an artist I'm taking a deep dive into a culture that is not my own. A couple of years ago I started watching Korean dramas and quickly became obsessed. That led to doing more reading about Korean culture and history, and ultimately to trying to learn Korean. As I get exposed more and more not only to South Korea and its popular culture, but also to a world of people interested in Korean culture, I am clearly not alone in my ever growing obsession, but K-dramas or Kpop seem to be a gateway drug, sucking people deeper and deeper into a vortex. And I think that's really wild and fascinating. Especially now that I have a better perspective on Korean history and just how poor and destroyed the country was just sixty odd years ago. I decided I needed to go to Korea and would have to generate an excuse to do that, so I started applying to shows in Korea and eventually got a small solo show outside of Seoul. I found that I was happier and more engaged with the world while I was there than perhaps I have ever been. So, I am thinking a lot about what makes this tiny country and its culture so seductive to people from all over the world, and am trying to give that experience a visual form. I am both extremely excited about this work, and more anxious than I have been about any prior project.

The photographers who inspire me are a constantly moving target. Back in college I was all about Cindy Sherman and Diane Arbus. More recently I have been inspired by Massimo Vitali, Edward Burtynsky, Richard Misrach, Alex Prager, Andreas Gursky, Victoria Sambunaris, Maria Svarbova, Ole Marius Joergensen, and Anja Niemi ... for starters. Most recently, on a trip to South Korea I was introduced to the work of Koo Bohnchang and am absolutely captivated by how his mind works as an artist.