Shiprock No. 5
By Edward Bateman
Located in Sante Fe, NM
For those of us who live in the West, mountains are more than
just landmarks; they dene a sense of home. We have memories
associated with our mountains; those we grew up
surrounded by; remembering the rst time we saw one, and
the people we visited them with. This gave us all a larger
sense of where we locate home.
During our recent pandemic, home shrunk to the walls that
surrounded us. Real experiences became mediated through
computers and the Internet – but something felt lost: a living
connection with things bigger than ourselves. But we kept
our memories – waiting to be triggered by a photograph or
reminder of the mountains that could bring back that sense
of the sublime. Mountains and nature have long been places
of peace and refuge. There are few emotions about places for
which adequate single words exist. At the beginning of the
eighteenth century, the word sublime arose to describe the
feelings that the natural world can evoke in us.
At home, on my kitchen table, I have been trying to capture
something of that sublime in bits of plastic. Using geographical
data from the Internet, I used my 3D printer to make the memories
of those mountains tangible. With a small fog machine, I
create atmospheres and clouds. Sunlight through a window
illuminates some, while others were lit with a variety of sources
including ber optic lights used for microscopy.
For me, these images evoke the place I call home; and remind me
that it is our memories that make a place special.
At Home in the West was created as a companion to Yosemite:
Seeking Sublime, which premiered at photo-eye Gallery in
November 2020. In December of that year, work from that series
was invited to the Art of Staying at Home; Artists in the Time of
Corona exhibition at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt, where
I was the only U.S. artist from eight countries included. Additional
works from that series will soon be exhibited at the Krakow
Triennial in Poland and at the Earth Photo...
Category
2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography
MaterialsArchival Pigment