Nicole Jean
Hill

Artifacts & Incidents

I create photographs along the periphery of rural communities in the western United States - the spaces nestled between national forest lands and private property or the easement zones along county roads and greenbelts. Existing as neither private nor public, these liminal spaces simultaneously imply autonomy and lawlessness. Without a clearly defined function, these borderlands are an overlap of unruliness and regulation. They contain evidence of the disruptive character of human activity, efforts at cultivation, and the inherent wildness of an environment.

The images are of subtle and aggressive relationships within the natural world. They document the natural movement of land, disturbances within its contours, and discarded objects contained within. The source of action that has defined or altered a site or object is often unclear.

Within each frame and throughout the series, the familiar and the ominous coexist. My goal is to create implied narratives of the orderly and untamable. It is through this visual investigation that I question the nature of nature and the desire to define the boundaries between the knowable and unpredictable landscape.