Out of Place, Out of Time

Out of Place, Out of Time charts a cartography of displacement and emergence, where extinct species, digital flora and machine-mediated visions converge.

In the photographic series an extinct Key Largo cactus improbably takes root against its stark Antarctic backdrop of Deception Island, a volcanic island at the edge of the Antarctic Peninsula and a place whose very geography conceals a flooded caldera beneath its surface.

Out of Place, Out of Time reflects on environments in flux and the systems, technological and cultural, that attempt to capture, preserve or replace them. Landscapes conjured in split seconds by text-to-image generators have been committed to a medium designed to endure for centuries: platinotypes.

This 19th-century photographic process uses platinum and palladium salts—materials employed in the early days of photography as well as in today’s semiconductor technology. The choice of this durable medium gives the image a material presence that extends far beyond the ephemeral input of digital algorithms. A paradoxical alliance that renegotiates the relationship between time, memory, and image production. 

Like echoes of expeditions past, they question what it means to map and possess worlds increasingly mediated by artificial vision.

What becomes of ’nature‘ when it is not only represented but also reconstructed through algorithmic processes? Which images and narratives emerge and which are lost in the process?