It is an issue, a theme, that emerges in my work, this ontological tie, this inseparableness, of Native American people and Indigenous people and the landscapes from where we emerge.
Cara Romero, artist
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Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocene is the first major exhibition to examine the Anthropocene through the lens of contemporary photography.
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Artist Bios
ARTIST BIOS
Joiri Minaya is a multidisciplinary Dominican American artist who uses photo collage, self-participatory performance, public installation, and video to investigate the female body as it relates to identity, place, stereotype, culture, and the environment. In her work, Minaya exposes the persistent legacy of colonialism, how it informs the construction of identity, and how these constructions dictate perceptions of the self and others. Through a reflexive practice, she intentionally engages with the white, Western, male gaze and its accompanying expectations, only to subvert them in repeated reclamations of agency. Minaya is interested in what she describes as “the performativity of tropical identity as product: the performance of labor, decoration, beauty, leisure, service.” Her most recent work investigates a gendered but anonymous body that moves between domestic settings and the natural world.
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Cara Romero combines fine art with documentary-style storytelling in complex and nuanced depictions of contemporary Indigenous culture. An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, she is dedicated to conveying Native perspectives on issues of identity, representation, and environment. Her technically exquisite work reflects a diverse training in film, digital, fine art, journalism, editorial portraiture, and commercial photography. With this tool belt of skills, she stages theatrical compositions presenting both serious and playful social commentary on pressing contemporary issues. Romero’s practice also utilizes Photoshop as a means of visually communicating Indigenous worldviews by inserting magical realism and the supernatural into everyday life. In her 2019 Desert X exhibition in Coachella Valley, California, Romero created a series of billboards featuring young Native boys in traditional dress posed and playing among the rocks and windmills of the valley, effectively grounding passersby in what it means and feels like to be on Native land.
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Camille Seaman makes photographs with a concentration on the fragile and fleeting polar regions, creating landscape photography on the verge of portraiture as each iceberg appears to have its own spirit and personality. These stunning and intimate images break down any notions of separation between humans and nature. Born to a Native American (Shinnecock) father and African American mother, Camille’s sense of connection with landscape stems from growing up on Long Island and in New York City, not far from the Shinnecock Indian Nation. Her grandfather taught her how the Shinnecock saw the natural world, a knowledge and reverence vital to her international practice. Of her polar work, Seaman says, “I’m just there to press the shutter. I understand that it’s a calling. Sometimes I’m weeping as I take the picture, because I feel like this is all I can do: push this button.”
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