Overlook

Natalie Brescia

Overlook explores the concept of land as a container for personal and collective history, gesture, vulnerability, and associated memory. Photography and lens-based media have been instrumental in shaping the idealized and romanticized perception of the American West. These images imposed a rational order on nature, propagating a belief that if a photograph could capture the vastness of the American landscape, so could humans. I employ the photographic medium to emulate historical practices and disrupt the conventional relationship between the body and the land, questioning the very act of photographing the landscape. 

This disruption of the body’s relationship to the landscape begins in the act of creating an exposure. While these photographs may appear as if they were created through collage or digital manipulation, they were made with multiple exposures in-camera. Equipped with a waist-level viewfinder, the medium format film camera used for this project choreographs the way in which I create an exposure, by bending over backward. This movement signifies a subversion of historical photographic norms, highlights my vulnerability within the space, and acknowledges the vulnerability of the environment.