Anita
Allyn

Solastalgia

Solastalgia is an ongoing photo series that focuses on details of the natural world, the nature of photography, and how place relates to nature.

Works in this series highlight photographs of nature that are taped to various surfaces, in different environments, and then rephotographed. In each work, there is an image of an image that signals an absence of a direct referent. Something is lost and forgotten, bringing the viewer back to the images of nature. These feelings of absence and loss connect with ecological grief, a relatively new diagnosis for the long-term emotional impacts of climate change.

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The images of nature in these works are displaced in an environment, sometimes offering context– but most often – the viewer is faced with an abstraction of place. The work reveals beauty and resonates with solastalgia – a new concept developed to give greater meaning and clarity to environmentally induced anxiety and depression. While this disorder is often applied to people with PTSD from enduring natural disasters, Rethinking Nature positions us all as suffering from symptoms of solastalgia.