Westward Consumption*

Preliminary statement: “Progress”, as so many of us like to call it, has left the American West a dump site for yesterday’s best intentions. Fragile skeletons of our collective hopes and dreams no longer merely litter the landscape, but have begun to form infected, incurable lesions. With resources outstretched, urban sprawl devours what is left of pristine wilderness as irreparable climate change burns, floods and decimates the last records of a land once full of infinite splendor. When we think of the West, how should we define it, and where should we place value for it? Should we yearn for the “simpler times” that were anything but, or mourn the misguided hopes and dreams that left it in such squalor… or should we act immediately to drastically change this destructive course that threatens to erase everything it is?

Please scroll to the end of the gallery for full acknowledgement statement.

Interested in prints from Western Consumption? Click here.

I acknowledge that these images were taken on the ancestral lands of the following indigenous peoples: Ahtna Nenn’, Cahuilla, Cayuse, Cheyenne, Chinook, Chiricahua Apache, Clatsop, Crow, Dënéndeh, Diné Bikéyah, Fernandeño Tataviam, Confederated Tribes of Grad Ronde, Goshute, Hohokam, Hopi, Hopitutskwa, Jicarilla Apache, Kiowa, Klamath, Mescalero Apache, Nehalem, Numunuu (Comanche), Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute), O’odham, Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, Pueblos, Quechan (Kwatsáan), Shoshone-Bannock, Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, Southern Paiute, Sobaipuri, Tanana, Tohono O’odham (Papago), Umatilla and Walla Walla, Western Apache, Xawiƚƚ kwñchawaay (Cocopah) and Zuni. I acknowledge this not only in thanks to the indigenous communities who have held relationship with this land for generations but also in recognition of the historical and ongoing legacy of colonialism. May we nurture our relationship with our indigenous neighbors, and our shared responsibilities to their homeland where we now reside, travel, and explore together.

Process: These photographs are shot on Rollei IR400, Ilford SFX200, and JCH400 Street Pan Film in a Mamiya 7 6×7 camera with an R72 filter, printed on Ilford MGFB Warmtone Paper, and reprocessed in the Mordançage process.

*= this title is an early conceptual title and statement to define this ongoing and evolving body of work.