Landscape
Spring 2022 Competition
Transport us around the world or to a moment
Artist Spotlight Spring 2022 Landscape winner, Julianne Nash, took a few minutes to indulge us in questions we had about the creation of their work.
Mobius Photo: How did you discover your process of compositing and coloring?
Julianne Nash: This process has taken me a few years to develop; while in grad school I became really interested in how the inherent algorithms in Photoshop process images. This lead me to using scripts such as Focus Stacking or Stacking via Smart Objects to create landscapes and still life images that teetered on the edge of reality. After a while I became less interested in leaving a portion of the process up to the computer and wanted to take more control. Since I am a retoucher by day, I started to take a similar amount of precise control with my own work and have been combining those two skills ever since. In terms of the color, I started creating this series with the concept of darkness at its core. I wanted to create images that were disappearing off of the page. After reading so many books about climate change, I started to correlate the muted and disappearing color to the subtle disappearance of the planet. If we, as a society, continue to miss the alarms of change the entire planet will disappear before us.
MP: Where has your photography taken you?
JN: For this series I have solely been focusing on the environment around me throughout the Northeast of the United States. I find that it's important to look in our own backyards and notice the environmental changes happening in our own landscapes. With that being said the majority of these images have been taken throughout New York State, with a few from Vermont and Maine. I was extremely lucky to have the opportunity to attend two residencies this past year, Tiny Birch (VT) and Norton Island (ME), both of which were incredible locations to source images from. However, this year -- pending any COVID delays -- I will be lucky enough to take a trip to Alaska with the Appalachian Mountain Club! I am so excited to see what images I can make from the incredible landscape!
MP: It looks like you mostly focus on natural landscapes and animal extinction, do you have plans to include humans or urban extinction in the future? What would that look like in your lens?
JN: I have been toying with the idea of the inclusion of humans and urban extinction for a while. I've tried a few different images but unfortunately tossed them all. It's an extremely important aspect of climate change that I feel like I need to address in the work. However, I have not found a way to render them that I am satisfied with yet. I do hope that when I do, they will continue to have the same essence as the rest of my work. The best part of my process after all is the experimentation!
MP: What artists inspire you?
JN: My biggest artistic inspirations would have to be Tanya Marcuse, Ori Gherst, Petra Cortright, and Mark Dorf just to name a few. I frequently revisit the novels of Haruki Murakami for his visceral writings deeply entrenched with a relationship to the environment. However, lately I've been really diving deep into more scientific texts on climate change such as The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace Wells, and truly anything and everything that the incomparable Dr. Anya Elizabeth Johnson writes (she's totally my hero!).
MP: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
JN: Always remember that corporations create over 70% of global emissions