Series Statement:
Turning to new digital technologies such as laser etching, Pixelsticks and video projection mapping, Stefan Petranek has created a series of augmented multi-media landscapes which address his anxiety for the future of our planet. Concerned that straightforwardly documenting the most vulnerable locations of climate change would not adequately portray the urgency of the climate change crisis, he has overlaid a reality check of data points, satellite images and thoughts pulled from scientific sources directly onto photographs of American landscapes. With a history of using the camera to investigate how our relationship to nature is influenced by science, Petranek’s new body of work continues to visualize a deeper sense of where we are headed while also dispelling the all too real myth of climate denial. Traveling across the country, Petranek has documented both the beautiful and the already disfigured landscapes of America, from the coasts ravaged by increasingly stronger storms to the droughts and forest fires in the West. The beautiful landscapes depicted mirror our denialist tendencies to only see what we want to believe—to deny our lifestyles are harming our planet and to see America as an enduring symbol of beauty and abundance. But the light writing and laser etchings disturb this pretense, layering climate change data and tales of its impacts which confront the viewer with the divergent reality that is coming for our most scared spaces. While the disfigured landscapes speak for themselves, his method of combining scientific knowledge with the photographic image creates a compelling, if daunting, new reality that emphasizes the conceit of our present state of self-indulgence and indifference.
1. Fire Line (Lovelock, NV), 2019, Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 30”
2. Fire Line (detail)
3. How the West was Lost—Snowpack Recession Rates, 1980s-2010s, 2019, (Summer Lake, OR), Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 30”
4. Sea Level Rise is Real (Loveland, IA), 2019, Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 30”
5. Washthrough (after Hurricane Michael, Cape San Blas, FL), 2019, Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 30”
6. As Goes Utah…So Goes the West, 2019, Archival Inkjet Print, 10” x 15”
7. As Goes Utah…So Goes the West (detail)
8. Phases of Drought (Lake Abert, OR), 2019, Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 30”
9. This Could be Anywhere, Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 30”
10. Could it all Look Like This Eventually? (Arco, ID), 2019, Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 30”
11. Access Denied, This Reality No Longer Available (Slide Mountain, OR), 2019, Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 30”
12. Double Vision (near Thompson Springs, UT), 2019, Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 30”
13. 1,200 gallons of CO2, 2019, Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 30”
14. What Can We Do? (Summer Lake, OR), 2019, Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 30”
15. What Can We Do? (detail)
16. Ominous Prognosis (Chesapeake Bay, Harrington Harbor, VA), 2019, Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 28”
17. In Just 10 Years, (2006: CO2 = 383ppm, 2016: CO2 = 404ppm), 2019, Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 30”
18. Lost (Summer Lake, OR), 2019, Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 30”
19. Atlantic Hurricane Paths, 1985-2005 (Frisco, NC), 2018, Laser Etched Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 30”
20. Atlantic Hurricane Paths, 1985-2005 (detail)
21. What Will This Place Look Like in Fifty Years? (Upper Mississippi River, MN), 2019, Laser Etched Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 30”
22. What Will This Place Look Like in Fifty Years? (detail)
23. In The Eye—Hurricane Michael, October 8, 2018 (St. Joseph’s Peninsula State Park, FL), 2019, Laser Etched Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 28”
24. In The Eye—Hurricane Michael, October 8, 2018 (detail)
25. 10,000 years of CO2 (after Hurricane Michael, near Marianna, FL), 2019, Laser Etched Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 30”
26. 10,000 years of CO2 (detail)
27. Unavoidable (Hurricane Irma, September 8, 2017), 2019, Laser Etched Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 20”
28. Unavoidable (detail)
29. My Grand Children Won’t Get to See This, 2019, Laser Etched Archival Inkjet Print, 20” x 30”
30. My Grand Children Won’t Get to See This (detail)