the intimacy of extinction

What is The intimacy of extinction about?

This question defies any definitive answer. Instead the title hints at a thinking about the phenomenon of extinction and reflecting on the direct experience of extinction from a purely personal, subjective perspective.

The intimacy of extinction is a long term, phenomenological photo project made on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, a place renowned for its exceptional natural grandeur, and unprecedented environmental destruction.

Sumatra's once vast, contiguous forests, renowned for its spectacular biodiversity, have now been reduced to a handful of isolated nature reserves.

Nature reserves are strange things, they evoke a sense of permanence and impermanence at the same time. As the forest disappears the nature reserve appears. In a sense the nature reserve is a tangible and approachable manifestation of the age of the 6th mass extinction.

To approach the nature reserve in a spatiotemporal context discloses a truth concealed in the familiar understanding of today´s environmental reality.

The image of the untouched wilderness reflects the intimate yet inescapable reality of living in the ´age of the 6t mass extinction`.

As Sumatra's forests have ´grown` into their present shape, they exert a calm presence over the surrounding lands.

the intimacy of extinction

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