sullivan – New Landscape Photography

www.Jordan-Sullivan.com

The Young Earth is set in Iceland. The story follows two Americans in the last days of their twenties, one them terminally ill, as they explore one of the youngest bodies of land in the world. The men immerse themselves in the idyllic and remote corners of the Icelandic countryside (a place completely foreign to both men), where they are forced to confront their own mortality and a past love triangle that briefly destroyed their friendship.

Through meditations on death, the loss of youth, and the beauty and complications that come with love and friendship, The Young Earth explores how two men attempt to move on and find courage and calm in the face of oncoming tragedy.

— Jordan Sullivan, Los Angeles

www.BuzzySullivan.com

This body of work is an exploration of the rapidly-changing landscape of the American West, devastated by the depletion and manipulation of water and water rights. This work focuses on the engineered ruins of California: I aim to pose a series of questions about the sustainability of agricultural and population booms in the semi-arid state.

I shot the images that make up The Smell of Success / The Effects of Decay as 8×10 wet-plate ambrotypes, which is the same photographic process used by the post-Civil War photographers who traveled with government-sponsored surveys to document the then uninhabited West. Their 19th-century images created a sense of what could be tamed and owned in the American West. My photographs emulate my predecessors’ images, allowing the viewer a vantage point to contemplate how we as a society have managed resources in some of the most environmentally-fragile areas over the past century.

Buzzy Sullivan, Portland, Oregon, USA