“Expressed through a photographic narrative, the project Days of Plenty; an Archive of Abundance seeks to reflect on the relationships between humans and the living world. At a time when a reframing of this relationship is urgently called for, these often disturbing works employ extraction as metaphor for a wider story of attempts of dominion over the natural world. Emerging from my family’s history as colonial settlers working in extractive industries in British Columbia from 1887 through to today, and continuing with photographs collected from around the world, I engage with questions around new paths of relation with the other-than-human.These historical photographs are frozen moments in time, offering us glimpses of a natural abundance that is almost unimaginable today. As I collected the images for this project, as I read histories of plenty, unbidden came a quiet exhilarating wonder as I conjured ten thousand bison thundering across the plain, salmon in their thriving millions returning to the rivers… But I also felt a deep pain, for we have burned so many books in the Library of Life, denying the very meaning of our existence. By closely examining the images in this project, we uncover themes that still resonate today, in a rather disheartening way. The trinity of capitalism, colonialism and racism all make appearances, self-glorification and waste peek through, as do ideas of land use and stewardship. But it is a seemingly foundational human desire for supremacy over “other” to which I constantly return, the breaking of which remains at the very heart of this project.”
In partnership with the French-American Institute of Rennes and the Maison Internationale de Rennes
