The balance of nature has been disturbed.

The three largest wildfires in Colorado’s history burned in 2020, setting aflame nearly 700,000 acres. In the summer of 2021, the American West was considered to be experiencing the worst drought in modern history.

This project raises questions about the future of snow and its impact on drought and wildfires. By dividing it in three sections - Biophilia, Disturbance, and Water In The West - I explore human innate connection to the environment, and merge scenes of beauty and destruction as if they were part of one continuous landscape, showing how everything in nature is connected. Additionally, I capture abstract photographs of familiar landscapes that are vulnerable to environmental changes. I document the subject through a variety of different exposure times, challenging our perception of reality. Climate change is something that happens over time, and is hard to make sense of in a single photograph. By shooting long exposures of moving clouds and flowing rivers, I blur the lines between time and space, thus relating to the passing time that is the essence of understanding climate. The different technical approaches in this project were my explorations of expressing grief about the changing environment. Metaphorically, the long exposures also relate to the slow, drawn out actions by the world’s governments on implementing solutions to the climate crisis.

With an average altitude of about 6,800 feet above sea level, Colorado is the highest state in the contiguous USA. Of particular importance is its position in the middle of the continent, which gives it the arid, high-desert climate even though it boasts 59 peaks that rise over 14,000 feet. As a result, the region doesn’t receive much precipitation in the warmer months. Thus, it greatly depends on winter storms to accumulate snow high in the mountains, and act as frozen reservoirs throughout spring and summer.

Even though I specifically focus on the Roaring Fork River basin in my photographs, this information applies to all of Colorado’s Rockies - climate change has shifted the timing of spring, and with the winter snow melting earlier, wildfire risk is expected to rise. This will also have consequences for water resources and ecosystems.

Winters in Colorado are already a month shorter than they were 50 years ago and the Roaring Fork Valley has suffered from major fires two years in a row. In 2020, Grizzly Creek fire burned in Glenwood Canyon, where the Roaring Fork river meets the Colorado river. In 2019, Lake Christine fire burned in the hills of Basalt mountain, causing evacuations of hundreds of people from their homes. As the world warms, the fires will burn more often and more intensely.

Bearing witness to the changing landscape takes a toll on mental health and well-being. It has even been described in psychological terms as eco-anxiety, the chronic fear of environmental doom. As I watched the ashes fall out of the sky and prevent us from doing any outdoor activities, I wanted to find a way of conveying these issues through my photographs in a way that is meaningful to the viewers. People often think of climate change as a “distant issue in both time and space”. The recent fires show that the issue is here, happening in real time, in the place we live, and we can’t look away anymore.

Philosopher Glenn Albrecht proposed the term soliphilia to express the feeling we experience when we are engaged in the politics of a place we love. This association with positivity and interconnectedness is the optimistic outlook on the future that I have based my work on. Instead of showing only devastating impacts of climate disasters, I decided to focus on landscapes vulnerable to environmental changes and show what we are at stake to lose. These photographs invite to see the beauty of our landscapes, and hopefully ignite the need to protect.

Disturbance at the red brick center for the arts, December 2022-february 2023:

Disturbance at ACES, December 2021:

The photographs in this installation were printed on eco-friendly paper, mounted onto hardboard with wheat paste (made out of flour and sugar) and the information is written on the boards with chalk.

This art is not meant to be permanent, as it relates to the ephemeral nature of existence. The prints will degrade over time as they are exposed to wind, sun, snow, and effects of climate change.