The images in my Portraits and | of Landscapes series illustrate the personalities, expressions, and emotions of the Earth’s biodiversity, the landscapes that define them, and the interactions between biodiversity and geodiversity that create a sense of place for myriad species.
We usually think of portraits and landscapes in anthropocentric (“human-centered”) terms. Portraits that are more familiar to us are carefully composed artistic representations that illustrate personalities, expressions, and emotions of individuals, families, or small groups of people. Landscapes are what we see around us. Their characteristics and our sense of place within them define our self-image and, by exclusion, the “others” who are not us or of our place. Yet, landscapes also have their own expressive personalities that range from austere in still deserts to vibrant and dynamic on active volcanic shields.
We share the Earth with tens of millions of other species, and we now know that that all of them—from the smallest virus or bacterium to the largest redwood tree or blue whale—also have individual personalities and chemical or neural systems that give them what appear to us to be unique personalities and emotional expressions. And like us, other species also appear to have a sense of self and a place within their own appropriately scaled landscapes.
Individual images from Portraits [ and | of ] Landscapes have been shown in juried group exhibitions in Pennsylvania and Virginia, and 21 of them will be on display from July through December 2025 in a solo exhibition at the Forge Baking Company in Somerville, Massachusetts. Other sub-series are in development, including a set from Namibia & Botswana and a group of Coastal Landscapes. A full-length photobook of this series is in the works.
Last updated 12.VII.2025
The Unbalanced Ecologist 