It is estimated that 95% of the planet’s landmass, excluding Antarctica, shows some sign of human activity. According to one recent study, around 16% of these areas have been heavily modified. In an age where a discarded plastic bottle can travel thousands of kilometres in a matter of months, and mining, deforestation and urban development have changed landscapes beyond recognition, there is little doubt that the world has been irreversibly shaped by human behaviour. This is the primary concern of lens-based artist Diana Cheren Nygren, whose work explores how people interact with their environments, often altering or damaging them in the process.
The series Mother Earth: Nevertheless She Persisted (2023 – present) uses the barren and slightly other-worldly deserts of the southwest USA to represent what the majority of the Earth might look like as it continues to be shaped by rising temperatures, drought and fires. Scenes of craggy rock faces and wide, open spaces speckled with cacti are interrupted by a tiny window into domestic life. Nygren affixes a small square showing some form of civilisation, or habitation, onto each photograph. In one, two people sit on deck chairs in front of a water fountain. Elsewhere, in a picture entitled Gen Z Doesn’t Want to Drive Cars, a golf buggy is left seemingly abandoned in front of lush greenery and palm trees. The dense foliage makes the background image of a highway stretching through the desert seem desolate.
These smaller images are protected by an acrylic screen, a visual signifier of the sense of detachment many people feel towards nature. In 2022, the number of people in the UK gaining health benefits from spending time in nature dropped by 1.1 million compared with 2020. Across the Atlantic, the Covid-19 pandemic saw an increase in in-home activities in the USA that has continued in the five years since. Paired with pervading feelings of climate anxiety, which affect around a quarter of Americans, and it is clear that people are spending less and less time in nature. Nygren reminds us that a psychological feeling of distance does nothing to benefit our environment. The wider canvas is left without a glass screen, making it exposed and vulnerable, much as these locations are in reality.
The series forms part of a wider dedication to the landscape, something Nygren has turned her attention to consistently since taking up photography. The artist spent her career as an art historian but began lens-based work to slow down and reconnect with the world. She describes her practice: “I love an unpopulated landscape or a sky filled with nothing but light and colour. I believe that both my landscape and urban photographs are portraits not of individuals, but of cities and locations, remarkable for their distinct character. The message in photography is to slow down and appreciate that character, to take it in thoughtfully, to wonder at the beauty of the dunes and how dramatically they capture light.”
Words: Emma Jacob
All images courtesy of the artist.
