Portraits of Ephemerality

Portraits of Ephemerality is a photographic series combining traditional landscape photography with contemporary portrait lighting to isolate the fragile elements of the natural environment most immediately impacted by climate change. Like fossils, these photographs create an impression of their physical form in an ever-changing environment. Climate change is a hugely complex and multifaceted issue. This body of work appeals to the sublimity connected to these fragile places by creating a visual experience embedded in the precise simplicity of unconventional composition. In choosing to establish a relationship between my audience and the environment I photograph the ice as human portraits. There is plenty of polarizing imagery of the disappearing Arctic. It has been found that those photos are more likely to distance or disengage an audience, making them feel helpless and overwhelmed. Using studio-style lighting to build photographs around the arctic’s fragility, Portraits of Ephemerality aims to encourage emotions of awe and wonder to create a positive association to inspire viewers to value and preserve these places. By obscuring scale these photos encourage a closer look at these remote and unstable areas by triggering a sense of curiosity.