Can humans capture the natural world via photography? A journey across marginal worlds involving spaces, places and, atmospheres.    

Streets of Redfern, New South Wales   2017

When considering the notion of ‘the marginal’ from an ecological perspective, we often visualise the expanse of the ocean, the edge of the sea, as well as the connection of water to land, animals, and everything in between. American marine biologist Rachel Carson defines the edge of the sea as an ‘elusive and indefinable boundary’, with a dynamic relationship to the shore. A similar theme can be observed in the suburb of Redfern, which has contributed to the rich history of Sydney since its grant of 100 acres in 1817 by William Redfern. The construction of streets, Victorian terraces, housing and commercial developments constitute a community, akin to the way in which the interaction of ocean and land forms an environment where the sand, cliffs and sea creatures adhere to its movement and purpose. Town planning strategically positions certain plants, trees and various other features of the green environment in accordance to a scheme that does not disrupt human activity, thus providing pleasure and purpose to the flow of everyday life. Just like how the ocean nourishes and perishes its environment, the plants and the trees on the sidewalks of Redfern, while currently docile to their man-made surroundings, may eventually grow to overcome the design of man.    
 

Redfern Mural 

However, over the course of the twentieth century, ecocritical scholars generated significant debate over mankind’s attempts to classify, signify and constrain the natural world. This discourse actively resisted the traditional inclination of a plethora of human cultures to express themselves by invoking elements of the material world. By overturning the conventional impetus to decipher “inherently voiceless” environmental objects in accordance to what human societies intended them to mean, we can apprehend the curious and mysterious possibility of ‘the material’ to speak on its own terms. In his seminal 2001 text Thing Theory, University of Chicago academic Bill Brown pondered the capacity of the natural world to “speak back” vis-à-vis the human actions which attempt to shape it. Brown’s idea of a symbiotic relationship between human and non-human spheres is paralleled by traditional Australian Aboriginal perspectives of land. Indigenous societies preached a spiritual, physical and social connection between its members and the surrounding world, in which aspects of nature – from rocks to trees, rivers to hills – are essentially derived of the same substance as their human ancestors who continue to exist through the environment. A stark cry from the contemporary view of land as a product to be developed and commodified. For example, the Aboriginal Flag mural in The Block, Redfern reflects this worldview, through its close placement of the signifiers of black (the Aboriginal person), red (the land) and yellow (the sun), therefore positioning the human and the non-human as co-dependent entities.  

  

Recyclable aluminium 2018 

Garbage – cans, metal, single-use items – is of paramount importance to recycling and environmental maintenance. However, the process of disposal is often overlooked and trivialised in our contemporary global capitalist system built on commodification. It is important to focus on the natural life cycle of manageable metals, thereby conceiving these materials as part of nature, in which their man-made elements constitute new paradigms of what nature can be and is. For example, the chemical and compound nature present in aluminium tins which store everyday kitchen foods and carbonated drinks encapsulate a considerable portion of our daily human waste. While the sheer number of cans, metals and single-use items in the photo above demonstrate the “ugly”, discarded economic view of nature, they may simultaneously be perceived as the basis underpinning a marriage between the everyday human world of commerce, life and enterprise with the non-human world of chemical reactions, cells and life. We too are connected and affected by a mundane, discarded aluminium can, sitting in a pile of garbage. This allows for a brutal and dim portrait of nature, evoking the chaos of human organisation.
 

Plane view  2018 

 
The space in the sky, in which birds look down and ahead is a space inaccessible to humanity and presided over by airborne species. The view that our feathered friends enjoy everyday is commonly understood as a “bird’s eye view.” For us, the uncanny experience seems as if we are flying between worlds – the ground-world that feeds, nourishes and stabilises us, and the sky-world; the road of flying species. However, birds – just like humans – are confined in this earthly space, in the sense that if they were to travel further and further up, the oxygen would eventually not sustain them. The sky, the earth, water, air, land, places and spaces contain all forms of matter that connect us and everything until the boundaries of life are meshed and tied, formed and changed. The blue-greenness of everything is what the world as a whole bestows upon us: the further we zoom, the greater the two colours become a hybrid.



Banaue Rice Terraces, Philippines,  Wikimedia commons 

I tried to find images from the last time I visited my family's country, when I was fourteen. We took many photographs but now the images are lost somewhere. It’s interesting remembering a time when I was so physically close to my ancestor's location on the home they built and the land they maintained. The rice terraces surrounding the high mountain northern part of the country is understood to be carved by hand for generations and demonstrate a useful irrigation system that utilised the rainforests above the terraces. For this corner of the world, a history of years and years of farming demonstrates a mark of human presence and harmony with the land and its resources. Rice is a staple food in which it is not just eaten but is also a part of the people's culture and life. Through the land I am connected to my ancestors and through the image I am connected to the memories of my experience. I understand that there is a point of origin that I am a part of and it is the earth, through which there is a kinship with my bloodline and the soil, as well as all its resources. Nature touches and remembers all of us – all our ancestors and our future families. We are connected by blood, places, and nourishment which is a form of nature, for natural time is not linear.  

Eiffel Tower

The relationship between the ground-world and the sky-world is an interesting one to consider. Human beings pride themselves on having effectively colonised the entire scope of the ground-world, transforming all its living things, creatures and elements into viable commercial objects for the sake of capitalist exchange. However, despite the inventions of planes and satellites, the sky-world remains a formidable and impenetrable terrain. For example, an important question to ask is if whether satellite views of the world are truly created by and for humans, or instead our perceived material, technological under-class (i.e., computer programs such as Google Earth). Photographs ‘made by and for us’ through such programs ironically promote the idea of the ‘human’ world we own as one purely created for image-taking by non-human, technological species. Furthermore, Bill Brown’s notion of material objects asserting their autonomous existence vis-à-vis human supremacy through the sky-world – such as being bopped on the head by a falling nut – articulates the sphere above us as an unpredictable threat. This notion gains deeper significance in tandem with a 2017 Harvard University study which proclaimed that a solar flare within the next 100 years could potentially cause a technological wipe-out – from the grid, to the internet – effectively returning our advanced, superior societies to the medieval or stone age period. Therefore, by identifying both all aspects of the world we live in – from the haptic elements that human beings can touch, as well as the uncertain,