This series of works is based around the belief that everything that came and was born from the earth, will eventually one day return and become part of nature again, or in a simpler and familiar saying: ashes to ashes and dust to dust. I find comfort in the thought of this cycle reincarnation and that every end is the start of something new. I created my own representation of mother nature in the models to both portray the life of the landscapes and also the spirits or energy that is embedded in the earth.
I have dipped my toes into religion a handful of times growing up, but I could never stick with it or find comfort. This project allowed me to find a way to develop a deeper connection to my open ended beliefs and look at the world through a new lens, which is something I captured in the images. I found both comfort and a little challenge with this new idea since I was stepping into new process of creating and capturing my ideas in photographs.
The strengths of the project are the figures and finding enough balance of being able to see the figures, while also blending them in enough to cause the viewer to search for them and spend more time with each photograph. This was also one of the biggest challenges for myself because since I am the one placing each figure, it is always easy for me to spot them, while someone who has not been editing these photographs, would have a harder time since they are unaware of what to look for. A weakness of the project is the variety in the landscapes. I believe if I continue this project through each season and get more variants of foliage it would feel more complete and each photograph would be more distinct from each other.
In a push to add variety and push this idea forward, I brought in a model to two of the images. I came to this idea because we are constantly surrounded by this energy/life whether we are aware of it or not, it is not just a being that presents itself when human life is absent.
