between / two skies / And a firm ground


Fred Simon Gallery
June-August 2024



Photography and multimedia installation with sublimation on polyester, metal structure, and sound. between / two skies / and a firm ground (Land Meditation, Expanded) is an analog photography and installation series developed at the Folsom Point nature preserve in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The series moves away from classical, male-centric landscape photography—which treats nature as an external view to be looked at from a distance—to propose a direct collaboration between the human body, the territory, and the film strip, reinforcing that we are nature rather than separate observers.

Shot on 35mm film, the images rely on a layering of planes caused by the irregular advancing of the film inside the camera. This physical process spontaneously overlaps hills, trees, and dry grass, cutting the horizon into sharp geometric blocks. This technique disrupts the linear perspective of the field, acting as a metaphor for the slippage of memory, where our mental records of a place become fragmented, stacked, and unfixed over time.

The exhibition expands photography into the gallery space through a large-scale textile installation. The entire roll of film is enlarged and printed onto a long, winding translucent fabric that cuts through the room. It is paired with an ambient soundscape recorded on-site that blends the wind, birds, and dry grass crunching underfoot with the heavy hum of a nearby soybean processing plant—an industrial drone that, inside the preserve, creates a singing bowl resonance. Walking along the fabric, the viewer experiences the landscape not as a static view, but as an active, fragmented, and industrialized environment.