This project asks us to reconsider how we see landscape. By photographing Grand Staircase-Escalante from directly above, I remove the horizon and familiar cues of scenery, transforming immense geological formations into abstractions of color, texture, and pattern. These images invite curiosity: What am I looking at? Gradually, abstraction gives way to recognition. The patterns reveal themselves as a real and ancient place whose future is being reshaped by human decisions.

 

The July 2026 executive order reducing the monument by approximately 90% has dramatically redrawn the boundaries of protection, exposing vast areas to a different and more uncertain future. From above, these boundaries are invisible, yet their consequences are profound.

 

As the photographs move from abstraction to recognition, they invite a deeper connection to the places depicted—and an awareness of what is at stake in their protection. The work asks what happens when we stop seeing landscape as scenery and begin to recognize it as irreplaceable, and as something we have a responsibility to protect.