Anthroposcenic
The title of this work is Anthroposcenic. It is a play on words with a fairly new word and an old word. The old word is scenic. The new word is Anthropocene. The British pronounce it An Throp a Scene. Our old geologic epoch is the Holocene. The Holocene had the benefit of about 12,000 years of stable climate since the ice age. The Anthropocene will likely have a different flavor.
We are now in a period when human influence on the planet is an important geological consideration.
A working group on the Anthropocene was started in 2009. In 2016 it recommended that the International Geological Congress declare a new epoch, the Anthropocene that began with nuclear testing during the 1950’s. That benchmark is convenient for geologists because humans at the time managed to blanket the entire planet in a sedimentary layer of radioactivity. And carbon dating will tell if something happened in the Holocene or the Anthropocene.
My work draws on the tradition of responding to and portraying beauty in nature that started with cave paintings and has been important in all of the history of art since. What differentiates it from the long history of illustrious predicating work is that my work looks to find beauty in the transition. I reach to the traditions in both painting and photography that have found beauty in representing nature to present what is today.
The work is one, but formed in four families of images. American Anthropocene, Clouds, Fire, and Animals. They are all Anthroposcenic in that they draw on the traditions of scenic painting and photography. They are all aspects or views of the same transition.