The Most Fantastic Rocks, an essay by Joanna L. Cresswell on LensCulture

2021/03/25

“Today, an unavoidable sense of impending ecological crisis pulses under our daily lives, and in recent years a number of photographers have made projects that respond to that anxiety. Coming together to form a new and more urgent environmental gaze, several of those artists are included in this essay. Both directly and indirectly, they find ways to interrogate the longevity of our increasingly fraught relationship with the natural world—through the subject of rocks.”
(…)
Den Boer: “In the end the meaning of the stones is not so much derived from the emotional story I have with them, but more as a way of trying to convey the value of the earth as a whole. Rocks and mountains have such a great primal force to them and that evokes a longing and a sense of belonging for me, and a strange feeling of reassurance. The earth, and the mountains existed long before we human beings did.”
(…)
So, why photography, and why rocks? For den Boer, “it has something to do with observing, and the intensity of the act of observing,” she says. “Photography might be my way to feel a deep connection with the landscape. I can look at it and be in awe, but when photographing it, the experience of feeling connected intensifies.”

Read the full essay HERE.