2027 SPE Annual Conference: Community in Contrast
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print this pagePicturing the Invisible
Friday, October 23 - 2:30PM to 3:15PM
WCAD 101
"Picturing the Invisible" is the title I have given to a series of artworks that visualize ideas or data that I can't photograph directly. Using maps, data points, and scientific projections, I am creating layers over photographs that add valuable context and information.
I have been photographing the Texas Coast since 2019 for a project titled "Oil and Water." My photographs represent major forces that shape the Gulf coast, including the oil and gas industry, wildlife conservation, tourism, and land development. As I worked, I encountered barriers: fences, private roads, restricted airspace, offshore development that is purposefully built far offshore, past the visible horizon. Other times, the barriers had to do with the abstraction of the idea. Climate change, the lives of ancient peoples, and invisible air and water pollution have powerful impacts on the Texas coast, but I struggled to photograph them directly and began considering how else I could represent these ideas. The first successful piece in the series was an image that layered a screenprinted map of projected sea level rise over photographs of Galveston Island. The ink is pearlescent, so the overlay is nearly invisible unless light creates a direct reflection from the print's surface. Its effect is subtle, communicating the unseen nature of many threats to the coast and engaging viewers who notice that their perception of the work depends on where they stand in relation to it. Later pieces address the concentration of offshore oil drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and industrial property ownership along the Houston Ship Channel.
Currently, I am experimenting with different media to build layers. One experiment involves embossing the tracks of hurricanes over a photograph of a cemetery monument in Indianola (a city that was abandoned after it was destroyed by hurricanes in 1875 and 1886). Other pieces in development represent mercury pollution in Lavaca Bay and the destruction and fragmentation of wildlife habitat caused by real estate development on Galveston Island and SpaceX at Boca Chica Beach. I am also experimenting with vinyl, video projection, piercing prints, and recorded sound and plan to have more progress to share by October.
My presentation would share my process of problem solving to represent objects and ideas that are difficult to photograph, as well as my experiments in different media to create layers of meaning. Viewed alongside the straight photographs in "Oil and Water, I hope that these layered pieces effectively tell a complex story about a unique and complex place.
speaker
Amanda Breitbach
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