About the Image(s)

I shot this portrait last September, at the PSA yearly photo festival that took place in Tucson, Arizona. I had signed up for the model shot, where models symbolized earth, wind, fire and water. The person in my image embodied Earth with his face covered in cracked and dry greenish colored mud.
I chose to convert his portrait into high contrast Black and White to dramatize textures and to create more depth through an almost pitch-black background. I asked him to close his eyes and in a meditative pose touch his dry soil cracked face with his desk worker’s soft hands. The idea was to capture a duality in the relationship between us human beings and Mother Earth - we are both caretakers and sources of harm. On the one hand, we pollute and destroy the earth we live in. But on the other hand, we take care of it, make it flourish and provide healing. For us, and for Mother
Earth’s survival, we humans have a shared responsibility to take better care and heal the wounds of Mother Earth."