'Under these Vast Skies: The Anthropocene Epoch': Picturing: Eco ruin – Focusing on the ‘wrong’ picture

A Photographic Essay Competition: Currently Shortlisted At first glance, these scenes seem surreal and almost magical. However, in terms of the Anthropocene Epoch, there is a sinister narrative at play. Human activity is having a significant impact on the planet’s landscape, climate, and ecosystems. Robert Smithson was ‘convinced that the future is lost somewhere in the dumps of the non-historical past.’ Under these Vast Skies set the uncovering of such moments at the heart of its adventure. Across scale, this collection of photographs from sites across Iceland and NE England, lays bare the impression that climate change, human behaviour and political motivations have had on shaping our world, our landscapes, and our lives. The concept in weaving these images together is: These Landscapes shouldn't look like this. As an interactive collection, the viewer’s gaze is captured by a beautiful element of the scene, such as the vibrant colours of the iron-stained pool in ‘Blast Beach’, before undertaking a deeper introspective analysis and contemplation. Subtle, tragic, and very sad, these ‘capsules of deep-time’ are each a recording of landscape in 2021. A note to the future: We are currently living within the restrictions of a World-wide Pandemic. These photographs were made possible because of a vaccine that enabled a window of time of permitted travel. These photographs were all taken on a phone, whilst wearing a facemask and in various speeds of transit. They were taken at opportune, often mundane, moments from a bus journey through Iceland and a dog walk on the coast of Durham, England