Heaven and Hell
Land
Domestication of Animals
War, Technology and Media.
Framing nature in representation: Art
Religion
Advertising
Humans have the natural instinct to control and manipulate the environment to suit their needs for survival. With the scale of the planet today, this impulse to control has turned into a manifestation of human greed, if only to profit from or to contain an increasingly population while forming cramped cities. In modern times, nature is but a caricature of itself.
In an effort to rescue nature from its impending doom, the new alarmist “green’ wave on the planet has urged every human endeavor to adopt a ‘green lifestyle’ label and promote the values of a good life based on a harmony between humans and nature. But it is only marketing as far as the eye can see. How did we get to this point? What are the forces that have created these conditions? Are these destructive forces in the human being as ‘natural’ as nature itself?
In ancient times, the first civilizations emerged when humans successfully dominated nature: first, agriculture, then the domestication of animals and lastly the construction of cities and the invention of writing. These 4 instances reveal this human impulse to reign over nature.
These series of photographs each represent one poetic instance of this process of domestication of the external world, and, by extension of humans themselves. Land, Animal, Living, Information, War, Consumption, Religion, Justice, Art, Love.
Most of the photographs are taken in Singapore, or in the Southeast Asian region and reveals patterns of domination that are not necessarily culture-specific, but that may be consistent across societies around the world.
all photographic prints 140 x 70 cm. Isabel Löfgren®2010
