BAKESCAPES

ABOUT THE WORK


Field Guide to Desired Landscapes (aka Bakescapes) is a blended investigation of culinary art and classic landscape photography.  This exploration in the pursuit of creating and capturing the ideal, serves as a replacement for the lived experiences I do not have access to as a city-stuck, nature photographer.  With this series I was not only able to explore different geographical locations from around the world, I was able to slow down and really look at the elements I love most about nature.  Each set is constructed to create the illusion of a perfect landscape, representing the places I someday hope to see and photograph in person.

Landscape photography was invented during a period when western cultures were exploring new lands and began using photography to document the splendor of the natural environment.  In the late 1800s, Dr. Peter Henry Emerson promoted naturalism and the idea of looking at environments for inspiration.  Photographing landscapes became a quest for beauty and a way of preserving the natural world.  Unlike other forms of photography, landscape and nature photographs are generally created for the purpose of capturing something beautiful or visually inspiring.  I created my photographs so that they would imitate the traditional ideas of capturing a landscape.  At first glance they look like beautiful, ideal scenes, but with a closer look they are artificially constructed from baking products.

I created the landscapes out of food, because I often find while baking, that the combinations of ingredients remind me of elements found outside in nature. And while photographing landscapes are often about capturing the ideal, baking to me is also in a lot of ways about creating the ideal both visually and through sense of taste.  By combining the two I worked to create the feeling of a perfect landscape.  But one of the most important and influential elements of a landscape is the sky that surrounds it. The clouds, colors and light of the sky are really what dictate the mood of a landscape.  The skies in my photographs reflect the ideal moment because it is those times of quiet perfection that make any view worth looking at.  From colorful sunsets and blue skies to gray cloudy days, each sky is individually created to fit the landscape during my photographing process in the studio. 

Each landscape I created is a collection of elements that I pulled from found photographs.  After looking at different types and characteristics of biomes from around the world, I collected the bits and pieces that inspired me about each landscape, and merged them together to create my own. For example when creating my desert scape I gathered images of everything from the smooth “hot and dry” deserts like the Sahara to the brushy semiarid deserts of North America.   Landscapes as a whole are classically and romantically inspiring, but what interests’ me is the smaller details that make up the larger picture. Every environment is made up of its own variations of color, texture and pattern.  It is the intricate details coming together to form something as grand and encompassing as the span of a landscape, that inspires me most about the natural world.  I have travelled a fair amount, seeing and exploring many a landscape, but it is the realization I have experienced only a tiny fraction of nature relative to all that exists. It is the thrill of knowing how much there is to see and the desire to witness as much as I can that fuels my love for nature.