Organic LandscapeS

A series of digitally composited photographic images featuring National Park landscapes buried under layers of “trash”, representing the impact of human-caused climate change on our National Park System. Each piece is created by layering several images featuring textures and colors mimicking natural landscapes, all found on the walls of dumpsters. Starting with an original photograph featuring a landscape taken while visiting a national park, images of dumpster walls are layered on top of one another until only traces of the original landscape are visible.

The average American throws away 4.4 pounds of trash every day, 60% of which is classified as organic waste. Food scraps, wood, paper, textiles, and yard waste buried deep in landfills, eventually decompose but are deprived of oxygen resulting in the release of methane gas during the decomposition process.

The greatest threat to our national parks is climate disruption. Warming at TWICE the rate as the rest of the United States, rising temperatures are forever altering our national park landscapes signaling a warning about the rapid pace of global warming and the impact of climate change. With 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide, methane gas emissions are driving the pace of global warming, and our trash is partly to blame.