Profile: In Formation, 2022

The landscape of Barbagia, a rugged interior region of Sardinia, is an integrated assemblage of plants, soils, and hydrogeological formations that organize themselves along a shifting vertical continuum. This work represents a way of seeing that responds to unique topographic conditions by aligning the camera with the vertical plane through which the warp and weft of living matter is bound. A complex and biodiverse profile reveals points of intersection between growth and disturbance that characterize a choreographed living architecture: the upward reach of plants towards sunlight, interlacing to form a dizzying aerial spatial logic; the corresponding extension of plant roots through fissures in stone to find water; the erosion of stone weathered by wind and rain; the resulting formation of new soils where plants find a foothold; the pooling of water at the lowest elevations; and the aggregation of organic matter where life proliferates. Such an architecture is anything but static, constantly remaking itself, disorienting in its vertical complexity, shape shifting over time.

This work was created during the fourth edition of The Photo Solstice, sponsored by the Fondazione di Sardegna.