Damp Bones, Iron Moon

Helena De Bragança, born to Portuguese and Polish immigrants in London, England, is a photography and video artist residing in New York City. “Damp Bones, Iron Moon” is a photography, book and audio installation that began in the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. De Bragança found herself roaming rural, desolate land in Vermont with her children immersed in nature that seduced and devoured them in a post-apocalyptic world. In 2022, De Bragança returned to Bombay Beach, California with her friend, Danniel Swatosh, almost a year after traveling there for the first time. They returned to a community that was traumatized and splintered after two of their members who they collaborated with, took their own lives in separate circumstances. They responded to the land, the sky, the wind, the dust, the iron, the bones, the moon, the darkness, and lightness. The jagged cracks burrow through the earth begging for water to return.