Jennifer Colten Wasteland Ecology Visions of Nature Review Markus

Ecologically speaking, the phrase "border furnishings" refers to the border between two habitats and interactions betwixt two kinds of built environments. Symbolically, I understand edge effects to be the meeting place betwixt two different kinds of perspectives; the synergies betwixt photography and environmental history present an example of such border effects.

The piece of work of American photographer Jennifer Colten offers an platonic instance for understanding photography's impact on our relationship to the surround. Coltenˈs series Wasteland Ecology, captured in 2014, is dedicated to photographically examining ecological edge furnishings. In her ain linguistic communication, the photographer is specially interested in the peculiar places of the "margins of the urban surround", which "are neither built for purpose and use, nor are [they] completely wild and untouched."

Jennifer Colten, Wasteland Ecology 9021. Click to enlarge.

Coltenˈs records are not intended as scientific observations or classification, despite the fact that they shed light on the diverse biologies that inhabit edges. Nevertheless, her work suggests the surprising biological diversity that tin be found in forgotten marginal zones. Her photographs also reveal a kind of unplanned ecological restoration in the ruined, forgotten, or otherwise indeterminate places that accept been described every bit "terrain vagues."

Jennifer Colten, Wasteland Environmental 9724. Click to enlarge.

In 1997, conceptual artist Hermann de Vries took up the phrase "terrain vagues" to build a landscape installation in Münsterˈsouth city park. Entitled "sanctuarium," this installation created a protected identify in the strictly cultivated artifice of the park. Here, plants would grow wild and unhindered to bespeak out the sharp dissimilarity between the site and the surrounding mural.

Jennifer Colten, Wasteland Ecology 8969. Click to enlarge.

Coltenˈs Wasteland Ecology examines both a recovering biodiversity in forgotten marginal zones, and likewise the expression of edgeland. Using scientific nomenclature, Colten creates an explicit dialogue between ecology history and the iconic works of American nature and mural photography to which her ain work frequently refers. Compared with the work of conservationist icons like Ansel Adams or Eliot Porter, Colten's photographs nowadays a completely different idea of nature and the surroundings. Porterˈsouth nonetheless lifes, for instance, create wilderness microcosms using fungi, lichens, moss, and fallen leaves in brilliant, colorful pictures. His idealized depictions of vegetation convey the impression of harmony and untroubled beauty in nature, and demand protection for these untarnished idylls.

Jennifer Colten, Wasteland Ecology 9317. Click to overstate.

With her records of ruptured not-places, Coltenˈsouthward series rejects this idea of intact nature. Her photographs simultaneously quote and question Porter ˈ south photographs. Although they describe details and scenes that evoke still lifes, Coltenˈs images are dominated by a subtly colored gray in contrast to Porter ˈ south rich colors. Often, the photographer highlights the melancholy of inconspicuous shrubs, bushes, and hedges located at urban marginal zones, emphasizing a place's desolation in its croaky soils and expressionless grasses.

Jennifer Colten, Wasteland Environmental 9522. Click to enlarge.

With her focus on plastic or glass fragments, Colten observes the devastation of the land without leveling an accusation. By picturing garbage as a remnant of civilization, her work besides takes upwardly Marion Shoardˈs definition of edgeland as being marked by trash. And even so Coltenˈs fine compositions quite frequently evoke the impression of calmness and placidity, suggesting a peaceful coexistence of grass covering over the scars of a ruined landscape.

Jennifer Colten, Wasteland Ecology 9599. Click to enlarge.

Coltenˈs unassuming records of forgotten nature infringe from a genre created in the early 1980s when Michael Schmidt brought together American and German photographers for an exhibition at the VHS Kreuzberg. Schmidtˈs photographic depictions of post-war depression in a divided Berlin used gloomy black-and-white images of "nowhere"-places on the metropolis ˈ s periphery to give the impression of political limbo. Inspired by this meet, John Gossageˈs photo book The Pond (1985) and Lewis Baltzˈs San Quentin Point (1986) employed bushes and thickets as symbols of uncertain environmental conditions. Moreover, Gossageˈs and Baltzˈs photographic methodology can be traced dorsum to Henry Thoreauˈs intense nature studies. For both their photographic series, Gossage and Baltz walked around an expanse only like Thoreau once did with Walden Swimming. They examined the site by photographic ways in order to create environmentally sensitive data.

Much as for Gossage and Baltz—and Thoreau earlier them—this firsthand concrete experience of space is essential to Colten'south thorough exploration of the environment. She repeatedly returns in her wanderings to the same marginal places, attempting to better capture their peculiarities. In her work, the thicket too is used as a metaphor to requite these marginal, indeterminate locations environmental meaning. Moreover, Coltenˈs piece of work creates a direct contrast to the glamour of romantic, transcendental panoramas like those created by Ansel Adams.

Jennifer Colten, Wasteland Environmental 8855. Click to enlarge.

Taking upward this heritage, Coltenˈs photographs pause with the tradition of idyllic landscape and nature imagery, but also point to a further shift of perspective. In the 1970s, the work of the New Topographics like Lewis Baltz and Robert Adams suggested the dichotomy of nature and culture by portraying precipitous contoured borders between suburban settlements and the surrounding surroundings. Using the slogan "new frontiers" their photography focused on the human-made landscape. In contrast, Coltenˈs images, although very much focused on anthropogenic environments, donˈt emphasize difficult distinctions between humans and nature. In Coltenˈsouthward photographs the man-dominated occupation of nature is only present every bit traces. Like a forensic record, her shots preserve bulldozer tracks or broken branches that call up a prior incident.

Jennifer Colten, Wasteland Ecology 8566. Click to overstate.

Coltenˈsouthward interest in "non-sites" and her exploration of how space can be separated from function besides refers to meaning works of conceptual art such equally Robert Smithsonˈs A tour of the monuments of Passaic, New Jersey (1967), though her own work is more photographic. While Smithson uses a contradiction between photography and text in his depiction of the industrial wastelands of New Bailiwick of jersey to undercut the myth of progress, Colten offers a far more conciliatory impression of post-industrial border lands. Relieved of representational duty and homo utility, Coltenˈs landscapes give ascension to an uncanny, but bonny calmness. Her shots simultaneously present a foregone devastation of the land, but they too convey a kind of tranquil peace.

Jennifer Colten, Wasteland Environmental 9688. Click to enlarge.

Wasteland Ecology, past focusing on edgelands, projects a new ecological sensation that rejects the difficult distinctions between industrial or suburban spaces and pristine "natural" landscapes. Coltenˈs photographs practise not advise a vehement nature hit dorsum, but instead give the impression of a resilient nature, in which a fragile coexistence between humans and environment seems possible, despite evidence of prior destruction.

Jennifer Colten, Wasteland Environmental 8942. Click to enlarge.

Jennifer Colten's photographs question and readjust our cultures of nature.

Gisela Parak received her Ph.D. in 2008 from LMU Munich. Her areas of expertise include Art History, American Studies, History of Science, and Environmental history. She currently serves every bit managing director of the Museum for Photography at Brunswick, Germany. Her second monograph,Photographs of Environmental Phenomena: Science, Politics, and Land Management in the Wake of Environmental Awareness, is nether contract with Transcript, Bielefeld and will exist published in 2015. Contact.

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Source: https://edgeeffects.net/jennifer-colten-wasteland-ecology/

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