Photo: Precipice, 2015
Precipice. On the edge. The fall is there, laid bare before your eyes. You can see it coming and it cannot be ignored. This is what drives us to the end; sometimes do or die is the only way. It’s a curious quality of the human condition, that which drives us to such extremes, becoming a metaphor for the human condition itself. Our drive towards progress at any cost is creating an entirely world, a world brilliantly evoked in a new exhibition of photographs: Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison: Precipice, at Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago, now through April 30, 2016.
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Husband and wife duo Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison first began collaborating as students in New Mexico. She was studying dance and metalsmithing, while he was focused on photography. After graduating, they began to consider man’s impact on the environment, and the way in which is changes out relationship to existence. For more than twenty years, they have explored this theme, showing us the power of nature, and the effect our actions have on it.
Downpour, 2015
They explain, “We create works in response to the ever-bleakening relationship linking humans, technology, and nature. These works feature an ambiguous narrative that offers insight into the dilemma posed by science and technology’s failed promise to fix our problems, provide explanations, and furnish certainty pertaining to the human condition. Strange scenes of hybridizing forces, swarming elements, and bleeding overabundance portray Nature unleashed by technology and the human hand.”
Intermission, 2015
By creating environments specifically to photograph, the ParkeHarrisons have reveal the power we hold in staging our lives, and charting our destinies, for better or for worse. The artists observe, “The stage offers endless narrative possibilities and favors contradictions—hope and despair, desire and failure… to explore the fragile human condition, and the overarching shadow of environmental destruction. Perhaps the only true hope for our world and our human spirit rests in our ability to imagine.”
Nature Morte, 2015
Combining a love of theater and performance, Precipice is a giddy, otherworldly experience. It is both foreign and familiar, beguiling and unnerving, like a dream you’ve had before that smells of fresh earth and vanilla. There’s a sense of innocence on the brink, a future that will forever be but is not yet, and were we here and now willing, we might just be able to turn back. But will we? Do we hear the warnings of fate where there is still time to act? Or do we hear them when it’s too late?
All photos: © Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison / Image courtesy Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
