Rebecca Najdowski

“Ambient Pressure” is an ongoing project that draws attention to the ways that photography has literally and conceptually “framed” nature. Driven by the alarming environmental changes of the Anthropocene, the artworks are formed through analog and digital interventions. My techniques of manipulation are experimental; I use blades, lighters, markers, plastic, rocks, bleach, and other materials intuitively, choosing what sort of marks, ruptures, or overlays to produce based on the original landscape image. I consider how to acknowledge the photograph’s own thin surface of plastic: what marks, abrasions, or obstructions can I add that will highlight its material construction? This process -that changes the material surface of the photographs- reveals the photographic conditions which objectify and distance nature from our human experience.