Over the past decade my major works completed, which include large-scale photographs and non-narrative films, investigate how globalization and technology effect our connection and disconnection to the landscape and place. The New South Project investigates the ways in which the global economic market and technology has distanced our connection to place thereby creating a radical form of displacement to landscapes in the global south.
This project began in Bangalore, India, where I was a Fulbright Scholar in the fall of 2012. I went to Bangalore to photograph the changing landscapes of the city and the country due to the booming IT sector. This project has expanded to include the Deep South of the United States, in states such as Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, where the oil industry dominates. Each location in The New South Project is facing many challenges due to globalization some of which include, environmental degradation, displacement and political instability. The New South Project investigates how new hybrid identities and landscapes are developing as a result of globalization.
The images are coupled with Google map images as a way to investigate the idea of lived experience of place versus a virtual one. In today’s environment it is very easy to virtually visit anywhere in the world, but what does it mean to physically embody a landscape or to have a landscape or place embody you? This project tries to answer these questions.
Additionally, there is a Google map, which can be seen here, that investigates the concept of embodiment interactively.
— Brooke White, Oxford, Mississippi, USA
