Throughout the past four years, I have studied regional environmental issues endemic to the Gulf South, such as coastal land loss and climate change. This work has drawn me to capturing sites where industry, humanity, and the ethereal landscape of Louisiana intertwine. Where jasmine wafts fragrantly in the spring and the land’s natural resources are harnessed and manipulated by man daily, humanity and nature stand in conflict. In this work, I attempt to explore the contradictions in communing with the land amid increasing environmental degradation in Louisiana. 

By rendering the relationship between portraiture and landscape photography, I use the figures of young women to construct imagery of landscapes that feel removed from the infrastructure separating society from the natural world and its destruction. My images, however, also contain physical indicators of extractive activity—objects that the subjects coexist with but rarely acknowledge or directly engage. Instead, I aim to portray these extractive practices and the ongoing degradation of the environment as ceaseless and often overlooked. While the figures appear removed from societal control, their landscape is blemished by signifiers of extraction. Within this framing, my images question the omnipresent influence of industry on our natural environment and one’s own coming of age in Louisiana.