How can we believe in a future that gets better and not worse? What prevents those in power from doing what is necessary to resolve the many crises we face? How to bridge distances between what we know and what we see or feel?
Slowly and Then All at Once, responding to these questions and more, weaves together photographs showing different forms of power involved in the unfolding ecological crisis—top down and bottom up, human and more-than-human—to convey a feeling of immersion and interconnection, a feeling of being caught up in this ongoing storm.
We see pictures of climate protests, high-level climate diplomacy (inside UN climate conferences – COP 26, 27 and 28), and more personal images, a kind of visual weather diary made during daily life. Often composed of multiple panels, the images can be read simultaneously as scenes happening in front of us and as fragments—photographs taken in different moments and from different positions. They are continuous and disjointed, clear and uncertain, with a slippery quality that echoes the sensation of looking at the world from an ecological perspective; that moment in which we realise we are always already bound up with everything else and there is no way to fully distance ourselves from what is happening around us.
In surfacing these feelings, the work helps dissolve cynical distance—a numbing illusion positioning us on the outside looking in and knowing for certain it is impossible to change the broken status quo—and to affirm a reality that makes hope possible. The fact that what happens next is not fixed, the future will be the result of a tangled and as yet undetermined ecology of interactions, of which we are all, inescapably, a part. Political and corporate elites are caught up in systems far bigger than themselves, and, as we are also a part of those systems, it is possible, in points of friction and convergence to reach them, it is possible to change course.
We live in an age defined by system breakdown, rapidly increasing inequality, and profoundly inadequate political representation. The situation is overwhelming. It can feel hopeless, it can make us want to give up, disengage, or turn to the narratives offered by the far right. This work attempts to counter these feelings, to create something with a physicality, a rhythm, an intensity that pushes through the dead ends of cynicism and resignation. And to give shape to something generous and generative, lucid and uncertain; to a feeling of interconnection and an understanding of power, which might help us meet the challenges in front of us.
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Solo Show, Fondazione Palazzo Magnani / Fotografia Europea, 24th April - 8th June 2025, Reggio Emilia, Italy.
