The current impasse between President Trump and Congress is now the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees, including National Park Service personnel, remain furloughed. Many of America’s public lands are without gates and largely unsupervised, and national parks, visitors and surrounding communities are feeling the effects. This conflict exacerbates the decision by the Trump administration to shrink the national monuments, designated by former President Barack Obama. The current government has rescinded national monument protections on 1.9 million acres of Utah canyon land setting conservationists and recreational users of public lands against the oil and mining industries. ‘This is Our Land’ is a visual conversation about the tension between experiencing and protecting the natural world. It illustrates the dual — and often dueling — mandates that Congress gave the National Park Service during its founding in 1916: to preserve our national treasures and to provide for the enjoyment of the American people. That conflict is captured through images of nature paired with images of people interacting with the natural world — how we experience, enjoy, reshape, honor and diminish nature. And how it changes us. This microcosm of a story in one park aims to create a larger picture of the state of our parks and why they are still important, relevant, and perhaps even magical in American lives today. This is particularly poignant right now as parks are closed across the country during the partial government shutdown and there are reports of damage to some parks in the absence of caretakers. The transformative nature of our parks acts as a blank canvas onto which we project our struggles and hopes. It can be both release and cure for what ails the soul of modern society. Images of public use reveal the joy of experiencing nature as well as the responsibility to leave it as we found it for the next visitor, more important than ever as visitors rise, funding drops, maintenance falters and climate change looms. These images also ask, “Who does land belong to and if we proclaim it ours, what responsibilities come with that claim?” When we say a place is ours it can be either out of pride or the desire to possess its resources, or both. A park is an intangible boundary within a larger ecosystem. Images on the fringes show how areas with fewer restrictions highlight the importance of land-use regulations inside the parks. This microcosm of a story in one park aims to create a larger picture of the state of our parks and why they are still important, relevant, and perhaps even magical in American lives today. This is particularly poignant right now as parks are closed across the country during the partial government shutdown and there are reports of damage to some parks in the absence of caretakers. The images were shot on film as artist-in-residence at Capitol Reef National Park, in Utah, USA in April/May 2018. Upon leaving the residency this inaugural journal entry was left behind: “I’m perched high on a hill off Notom-Bullfrog Road at dawn, the desert sprawling beneath me, cinnamon-bun domes looming in the distance, no sound but the wind, shadows gliding across the land like a raptor, alive and searching. With the cold of the night on my face and the rising sun warming my back, I look at the shale beneath my feet, once an ocean now a mountain, eventually disintegrating into a plain. Even in this stillness, everything is in motion – as am I – searching for the heart of the place, searching for where I belong in it – only a grain of sand in a vast, rugged, untamed land. The click of my shutter freezes this moment, but my perception of it will evolve in time’s ever-shifting sands. I am in Capitol Reef only briefly with my boots crunching clay and rocks, wind chapping my lips, lungs straining for oxygen and thighs burning. I am skin and bone, sweat and blood. I am alive. We navigate through land and time, leaving a cairn of our soul to find the way back here again and again. The park staff welcomed us with the embrace of old friends — both professionally and socially. They shared their knowledge of this land, its history and its secrets. Their enthusiastic outreach enhanced my work and experience. The Brimhall House reflected the same warmth, an idyllic cocoon and base from which collaboration and understanding could unfold. Capitol Reef is not an easy viewpoint or overlook. It takes time, perseverance and patience to unwrap its essence.”
