Rift/Fault (2006-2012) is photographic study of the land-based edges of the North American Continental Plate –in Iceland along the Mid Atlantic Rift and in California along the San Andreas Fault. Rift /Fault portrays moments of quiet anticipation in settings that shift between the wild and the contained, the fertile and the barren, the geologic and the human. The dichotomy creates a visual tension that questions the uneasy relationship between geologic force and the limits of human intervention.
Rift/Fault is photographic study of the land-based edges of the North American Continental Plate –in Iceland (Rift) and California (Fault).
For at least a decade I have been interested in the concept of boundaries. The boundary demarcates psychological shifts, difference, and hierarchy. Within the land, boundaries are often contested, politicized, or protected as wilderness. After photographing the highly altered and disputed lands of the Florida Everglades, I sought to find a geologic boundary that was immune to human alteration. The North American Continental Plate is a boundary that is purely geologic – it is not determined by politics, economics, or warfare. It cannot be altered or controlled in any manner.
Rift refers to the eastern edge of the North American Plate where it meets the Eurasian Plate, along the Mid-Atlantic Rift in Iceland. Due to the western movement of the North American Plate relative to the Eurasian Plate, new crust is formed as magma pushes up from the mantle. For this reason, the land along the Rift is unstable and raw. My images from Iceland document the land and structures pertaining to geothermal electricity, hot pools, volcanic excavation sites, houses, new earth, and cultural relics within the landscape. The visibility of the tectonic rift is highly evident.
Fault is a study of the shifting western edge of the North American Continental Plate, along the San Andreas Fault. I am interested in the visual traces (or not) of the tectonic plate edge as well as in the artifacts of our built environment upon these edges. The San Andreas Fault begins at the Salton Sea and runs for approximately 675 miles to Cape Mendocino. I photographed housing developments, wind turbines, earthquake monitors, roads, and the geologic fact of the Fault itself. While the San Andreas Fault is characterized by earthquake activity, the landscape is often striking in its visual normalcy; the ordered built environment seems to ignore the actuality of the land.
Rift /Fault portrays moments of quiet anticipation in settings that shift between the wild and the contained, the fertile and the barren, the geologic and the human. The dichotomy creates a visual tension that questions the uneasy relationship between geologic force and the limits of human intervention. Rift / Fault will be published next year in book form. Noted author Simon Winchester as enthusiastically agreed to write an essay regarding geology and the shifting edges of tectonic plates as an introduction to the book.