Everglades

As a native of South Florida, the Everglades is an ecosystem that has shaped my personal history. I have documented the landscape of the Everglades using my large format 8″x10″ camera and the wet collodion process, a nineteenth century process requiring the image be exposed and developed on site. The collodion process renders light slowly, revealing the passing of time, a quality which is essential to my work.

The Everglades is the only ecological system of its kind. In the dedication of Everglades National Park, president Harry S. Truman stated, “Here is land… serving not as the source of water but as the last receiver of it. To its natural abundance we owe the spectacular plant and animal life that distinguishes the place from all others.”

To date, more than half of the Everglades have been repurposed for urban and agricultural use. “Freshwater flowing into the park is engineered,” reads the brochure given to all visitors of Everglades National Park. “With the help of pumps, floodgates, and retention ponds… the Everglades is presently on life support, alive but diminished.” I hope to preserve an essence of the Everglades, a land we are losing without knowing the magnitude of our loss.