Vital Body
As uranium mining and refinement undergoes a new phase of heightened production in the 2020’s, the earth of the greater southwest, in particular ancestral lands of the Diné, Hopi, and other tribes surrounding the four-corners region, is continuing to be ravaged on a greater scale. Uranium is contained in ancient biological materials such as fossils which are prevalently found within sandstone, the dominant geology of these regions.
Vital Body is a series of illuminated photographs that explore a metaphysical imagining of the outcome of extraction: as biological ancestors (fossilized creatures of the planet’s past) are forced from the earth, they emerge from sand as glowing specters, permeating disruption to the surface of the earth in redressment of their violent summoning.
The colors glowing from within the images are those that are seen in human made uranium products: the warm gold hue of “yellowcake”, uranium in its milled form, and the electric green of industrial-produced uranium glassware, popularly manufactured since the early 1800s which emits a neon hue under ultraviolet light.