Brea Souders

Vistas (2019–2021) is a series of hand-painted images featuring disembodied human shadows found within U.S. national parks throughout the American West. These images are extracted from user-generated interactive ​v​iews uploaded to Google Maps, where artificial intelligence automatically removes the physical bodies. What’s left is the distorted shadow of the photographer imprinted upon the earth.

The images are hand-painted in reference to early twentieth-century picture postcards of landscapes. Once considered a way of infusing photographs with life, hand-painting was often performed anonymously by women. The form of these pictures draws influence from a time when people dreamed of experiencing distant landscapes and is made now in a time when we hope those landscapes will survive our occupation of them. As modern living continually draws us further from our origins, Vistas reflects on presence and absence, and on the complex ways technology mediates our experience of the world.

Texts:

1000 Words, Artforum, Frieze, LensCulture