From Inside This Earth
Millions of years ago plant matter full of sunshine was buried underground, where it slowly transformed into a rich but toxic substance, hiding quietly beneath our feet. A hundred and fifty years ago this substance transformed in human perception from a sticky mess to a world transforming product: Petroleum Oil. Today it is used to fuel our cars and heat our homes, it is a base material for plastics, and it performs as an essential lubricant for internal combustion engines. This quiet substrate empowers and impairs—toxic yet instrumental—it is the silent life-blood of our Capitalocene.
From Inside This Earth is a body of unique photographic C-prints made by enlarging individual samples of used motor oil. Remarkably parallel in their timelines, I utilize one of the most pivotal inventions of our time (photography) to investigate a similarly pivotal substrate (oil). In shining light through a substance that is in effect captured light, I revel in the absurd combination of these two pivotal medias. A substance I’ve relied on all of my life but rarely see; it has transformed the way we relate with the earth, as well as with each other.
To create this work I ask mechanics to put samples of used oil into small plastic containers, labeling them by the make, model, and year of car they were extracted from. I pour a thin layer of this oil on a glass plate, putting it inside a photographic enlarger where a negative would usually go. The enlarger sends light through the plate and lens, onto the light-sensitive paper below. The paper chronicles details within this semi-viscous liquid; a complex substance transformed into landscapes, moonscapes, and seascapes for our consideration.