Competitive Scholarship Application 2019
This portfolio is a collection of work discussing environmental injustices in the City of Baltimore. My goal is to expose pressing issues through photographic and sculptural means of documentation.
Untitled (2018)
Digital Photo Diptych
Researching trash accumulation in the Jones Falls stream led to the creation of these images. As a main water source that runs through the heart of the city, it is vastly contaminated with single use debris and toxic runoffs. Documentation such as this presents the archival quality that water systems are now responsible for, showing what the city consumes in one common receptacle.
No Man's Land (2018)
Silver Gelatin Photo Series
These images are one of five pairings in the series titled No Man's Land. They are based on an exploration of green spaces and the impacts that human influence have over them; be it manicuring, invasive species, population control, etc. Finding duality within these compositions is meant to reinforce the control, or lack thereof, that urban settings have over their organic counterparts.
Building Blocks (2018)
Collected soil, found bricks
Building Blocks is a sculptural documentation of the soil quality within the industrialized neighborhoods of Baltimore City. Most residents of urban spaces can understand the surface level of contamination, but this work was made to uncover the truth about the earth that we walk on, throw trash to, grow food out of, and build cities upon.
Within this piece, I have collected samples of dirt from each neighborhood present with ten percent or more land covered by industrial use, that I could travel to without introducing further contamination, i.e. driving or taking a bus. This includes 16 neighborhoods, within a four mile radius of my home in Bolton Hill. I combined straw and water with the soil to create a solution, which can then be molded into brick shapes, and baked in the sun. These bricks include any debris or invisible contaminants within that specific site, capturing archival remains in a new repository. The bricks are placed strategically within a brick wall, positioned as they would be on a topographic map, combining city mapping and image making into one piece. This concept was inspired by the uncovering of contaminants and re-purposing the city’s downfalls with its strengths.
Formally trained as a photographer, I consider this sculpture connected to my earlier works, each body documenting environmental destruction. In this piece, the individual bricks also become pixels in the larger map of an image, each with their own data and history, creating a comprehensive portrait of Baltimore city.
