New Middles at Night
Selected night time photography from Exhibit Columbus Photography FellowsOn the Origins of High Water, Virginia Hanusik
From the Mississippi Watershed, David Schalliol
August 19-October 7, Nightly
Locations:
Outdoors at 323 Brown St., Columbus, IN
On the Origins of High Water,
Virginia Hanusik
Engineering decisions to control flood waters in Montana, Indiana, and Colorado have environmental impacts as far away as the Gulf of Mexico. Although the region is intricately connected by a shared resource, there is a division between who has benefited and who has been harmed by over a century of human engineering to manipulate the river’s water flow. Infrastructure is not neutral; it is a physical marker of conflict that results in both loss and gain. Floods can no longer be considered a natural occurrence; they are often the result of policies which protect certain communities over others. By photographing sites of structural significance throughout the human-altered Mississippi River watershed, this project explores the social and environmental impacts of its infrastructure.
Virginia Hanusik is an artist whose projects explore the relationship between landscape, culture, and the built environment. Her work has been exhibited internationally, featured in The New Yorker, National Geographic, British Journal of Photography, Domus, Places Journal, The Atlantic, MAS Context, and Oxford American among others, and supported by the Pulitzer Center, Graham Foundation, and Mellon Foundation. She has lectured at institutions including Columbia University, Bard College, New York University, and Rutgers University about landscape representation and the visual narrative of climate change, and is on the board of directors of The Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans where she coordinates multi-disciplinary projects on the climate crisis. Her current body of work examines flooding and the politics of disasters in the Mississippi River watershed. She is a 2020-21 Photography Fellow with Exhibit Columbus and lives in New Orleans.
Virginia Hanusik
Engineering decisions to control flood waters in Montana, Indiana, and Colorado have environmental impacts as far away as the Gulf of Mexico. Although the region is intricately connected by a shared resource, there is a division between who has benefited and who has been harmed by over a century of human engineering to manipulate the river’s water flow. Infrastructure is not neutral; it is a physical marker of conflict that results in both loss and gain. Floods can no longer be considered a natural occurrence; they are often the result of policies which protect certain communities over others. By photographing sites of structural significance throughout the human-altered Mississippi River watershed, this project explores the social and environmental impacts of its infrastructure.
Virginia Hanusik is an artist whose projects explore the relationship between landscape, culture, and the built environment. Her work has been exhibited internationally, featured in The New Yorker, National Geographic, British Journal of Photography, Domus, Places Journal, The Atlantic, MAS Context, and Oxford American among others, and supported by the Pulitzer Center, Graham Foundation, and Mellon Foundation. She has lectured at institutions including Columbia University, Bard College, New York University, and Rutgers University about landscape representation and the visual narrative of climate change, and is on the board of directors of The Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans where she coordinates multi-disciplinary projects on the climate crisis. Her current body of work examines flooding and the politics of disasters in the Mississippi River watershed. She is a 2020-21 Photography Fellow with Exhibit Columbus and lives in New Orleans.
From the Mississippi Watershed,
David Schalliol
Inspired by the environmental systems that unite the Mississippi watershed, my project for New Middles focuses on two themes revealed in the landscape: systems of interconnection and representation. First, the project highlights the production, consumption, and distribution systems that generate local and global connections. Second, the project features physical representations of people’s relationships with their surroundings. By combining these two elements, I wish to address these simultaneously personal and systematic interconnections between the environment, economics, and politics that are essential to understanding life in these Middles — and how to establish solutions to a changing climate, environmental justice, and more.
David Schalliol is an associate professor of sociology at St. Olaf College who is interested in the relationship between community, social structure, and place. His work has been supported by institutions including the Graham Foundation, the Driehaus Foundation, and the European Union and been featured in publications including Social Science Research, MAS Context, and The New York Times. He is the author of Isolated Building Studies (UTAKATADO) and co-author of The City Creative: The Rise of Urban Placemaking in Contemporary America (The University of Chicago Press). David exhibits widely, including in the 2015 and 2017Chicago Architectural Biennial, the Centre Régional de la Photographie Hauts-de-France, and at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and he additionally contributes to documentary films, including Almost There and Highrise: Out My Window, an interactive documentary that won an International Digital Emmy for Non-Fiction. His directorial debut, The Area, premiered at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and has been broadcast as part of America ReFramed.
David Schalliol
Inspired by the environmental systems that unite the Mississippi watershed, my project for New Middles focuses on two themes revealed in the landscape: systems of interconnection and representation. First, the project highlights the production, consumption, and distribution systems that generate local and global connections. Second, the project features physical representations of people’s relationships with their surroundings. By combining these two elements, I wish to address these simultaneously personal and systematic interconnections between the environment, economics, and politics that are essential to understanding life in these Middles — and how to establish solutions to a changing climate, environmental justice, and more.
David Schalliol is an associate professor of sociology at St. Olaf College who is interested in the relationship between community, social structure, and place. His work has been supported by institutions including the Graham Foundation, the Driehaus Foundation, and the European Union and been featured in publications including Social Science Research, MAS Context, and The New York Times. He is the author of Isolated Building Studies (UTAKATADO) and co-author of The City Creative: The Rise of Urban Placemaking in Contemporary America (The University of Chicago Press). David exhibits widely, including in the 2015 and 2017Chicago Architectural Biennial, the Centre Régional de la Photographie Hauts-de-France, and at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and he additionally contributes to documentary films, including Almost There and Highrise: Out My Window, an interactive documentary that won an International Digital Emmy for Non-Fiction. His directorial debut, The Area, premiered at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and has been broadcast as part of America ReFramed.