warning signs
is a photographic series that asks how working with film can generate environmental knowledge through embodied practice. Made in the Texas Permian Basin, a landscape marked by more than a century of extraction, I use photography not as neutral observation but as a process shaped by material encounter.
This investigation forms part of broader research into how photographic practices might develop more reciprocal relationships with place, where knowledge emerges through sustained material engagement rather than visual consumption.
This investigation forms part of broader research into how photographic practices might develop more reciprocal relationships with place, where knowledge emerges through sustained material engagement rather than visual consumption.
Process: I hand-enlarged 35mm negatives and carried each print through a light-sensitive tube from darkroom to processor. This transfer left its mark including light leaks, fogging, and vertical lines that split the image. These interruptions aren’t mistakes but part of the conversation. The material resisted control, mirroring the land’s own vulnerability under extraction.
I’m interested in how practice-based methods can resist extractive logics. By letting the medium’s physical properties act as collaborators, the work challenges documentary photography’s claims to objectivity. The photograph’s surface records tension, fragility, and chance in the same way the landscape bears the scars of extraction.
