Visible Climate: Postcards from America's Changing Landscapes

Creator

Rachel Simmons
Lee Lines

Description

"This interdisciplinary project was completed in 2020 by Lee Lines (geographer) and Rachel Simmons (artist), colleagues at Rollins College who have collaborated on environmentally themed visual art projects since 2010. 'Visible Climate' is the product of more than 175 hours of field work in our national parks, researching and documenting climate change impacts, followed by a collaborative process of translating visual evidence into an artists' book to shed light on the impacts of climate change in some of our nation’s most iconic landscapes. To create the work, Lines’ original digital photographs (and two historical national park images) were reduced to black and white, transferred to Stonehenge paper, hand-colored and then re-digitized by Simmons. This multi-step process created a selective loss of information and degradation, while the hand-colorization references and challenges romanticized landscapes from postcards produced when the parks were first mass marketed to early 20th century visitors. Lines’ handwritten captions — based on his field work in the parks— imagine the voices of park visitors over decades as they encounter changing habitats, receding glaciers, and drought-altered landscapes." - Rachel Simmons

Publisher

Rachel Simmons and Lee Lines

Subject

Environment, climate change, national parks, parks, wildfire, drought, sea level rise

Extent

10 x 9" (25 x 20cm)

Style

Drum Leaf binding with illustrated covers

Material

N/A

Technique

Digital printmaking

Date

2020

Other Information

Print on demand book. More information can be found here: https://www.rachelsimmons.net/visible-climate-statement-2021 and here: http://www.vampandtramp.com/finepress/s/Rachel-Simmons.html

Recommended Citation

Simmons, Rachel and Lines, Lee, "Visible Climate: Postcards from America's Changing Landscapes" (2020). Rollins College Book Arts Collection. 32.
https://scholarship.rollins.edu/book_arts/32

Exhibit Location

This work was featured in the Cornell Fine Arts Museum as a part of the exhibition “Common Ground: Selected Works from The Rollins Book Arts Collection” from September 18, 2021 – December 31, 2021.