STATEMENT OF WORK

Over the past decade, I’m sure we can all agree, human impact on the landscape is now becoming more apparent each passing season. For myself, these signs have become the most obvious on the river systems and forests of the west coast region. Several years ago while fly fishing near the Olympic National Park, along the rivers edge was a large clearcut that extended at least 1000 acres out into the horizon. I was pretty affected by the sight of carnage, even though I knew that all the recently harvested trees weren’t of old growth, rather were most likely a mix of second growth spruce and fir. Upon my next trip back in 2018 I brought a vintage medium format film camera and I began photographing with out a conscious idea how I would use the images in my art practice. I felt compelled to photograph the landscape as a witness to what I was seeing in this fragile ecosystem, I spent weeks hiking into active and inactive sites taking over a 100 images using 120 film.

Since that initial trip, I’ve continued up and down the west coast photographing/witnessing the extraction industry practices of clear cutting. While making this portfolio of Platinum/Palladium prints, “Resource Extraction and Whats Left Behind”, it has become apparent that environmental degradation to these local eco-systems are directly caused by clear cutting and mono culture re-plantings. The  lack of forest bio structure and micro-climate regulation across the region directly impacts by amplifying climate change, resulting in wildfires and extinction we see today. 

All the photographs were taken myself with a Hasselblad 500cm using Kodak tmax100 film. Locations of the photographs were taken between Northern California, to the border of Canada.

All the photographic images were contact printed myself using Platinum/Palladium emulsion on 100% rag paper.  

Tony Belaver