Ollie Penner

I compile my own photographs with sourced maps and schematics to highlight the underlying efforts that create natural and pristine spaces in the United States. In this series I utilize Adobe Photoshop. This program allows me to overlay, juxtapose, and digitally collage different forms, textures, and subjects  in order to highlight similarities and differences between ourselves and the natural world.

I utilize photographs taken with my Fujifilm X100F camera as well as scans of grids and diagrams found in books and through online search engines. I use Photoshop to layer different elements and create relationships with my photographs. These diagrams outline essential infrastructures which provide the scaffolding of these picturesque and “pure” spaces. My references include information from classes taken at Bates and my own personal experiences in these outdoor spaces. Marisol de la Cadena is an indigenous researcher and writer. Their essay titled “Indigenous Cosmopolitics  in the Andes” inspires my questioning of the dichotomy created in western society between humans and nature. I take inspiration from going on walks and bike rides around California and in Maine and observing textures and forms which are deemed ‘natural’ but also appear to look manufactured. I am also fueled by my ongoing uncovering of how settler colonialism has shaped the way in which we view and interact with ‘nature.’

Works for this thesis follow similar themes of humans vs nature that are present in my personal artistic practice. The works of this thesis, however, focus more on the relationship between infrastructure and ‘natural’ in the United States.