Tris- 2022-2022 - ongoing

Witness: It comes from the Latin testificāre 'to testify', which comes, in turn, from the prefix tris-, of the prehistoric Indo-European languages, the same one that also gives rise to the English word “tree”. 

In this project, the forest is no longer perceived in the image but in the thought that persecutes us through the integrity of its ontological structure; a landscape that is first intuited and then traversed wherever it still exists. These images delve into the power of annual tree rings as archives, specifically through the use of sandpapers as a medium of exploration. The sandpapers I present for this work were used in the department of Ecology and Forest Dynamics of Barcelona to polish wood annual rings that carry important climate data. 

These historical marks of climate data left by tree rings on the surface of the sandpapers I collected and scanned, not only cross the physical image but also the aesthetic conceptions of beauty in landscape photography questioning our place within it. The tension between the romanticism that characterizes traditional landscape imagery and the current climate crisis presents us with new socio-ecosystemic questions in different fields. In which way conceiving landscape imagery will change in the future? At a time when the Anthropocene has become a normal word in our vocabulary, could we come up with the idea of a “neo-landscape” that marks the entry into a new geological age?

(In this investigation I count with the help of Emilia Gutierrez, professor at the Department of Ecology at the University of Barcelona )