image/jpeg | Feb 21, 2025 at 2:30 AM | 13 edition(s)

I look with a photographic and politically engaged eye. Google Earth is my usual camera these days. But beyond the primary colours and algorithmically cloudless skies of Google's Pretty Earth lie hidden, fictitious architectures and landscapes that serve as potent metaphors. These imagined underworlds act as abstractions of the real, varying in character from deceptive pleasantness to stark, industrial realities of power, hype, and hubris - forces that have often ignored the warning signs of our environmental crises. My current research explores the colonial past and its contemporary echo in neo-colonial practices — how the language of progress can mask a permission to pillage. Historical narratives like the Great Chain of Being, as well as racially charged ideologies, have long provided moral justification for domination over the land. These frameworks, which conflate divine sanction with human superiority, have rationalised the over-exploitation of natural resources and the subjugation of populations. Today, this legacy is visible in the uneven distribution of environmental degradation, where poorer and non-white communities are disproportionately burdened by waste and pollution. This series is a challenge to reconsider the assumed logic of domination and to envision a future where progress is measured not by the relentless exploitation of resources, but by the equitable and sustainable stewardship of our shared planet. ----- sources: Google Earth, SIO, NOAA, US Navy, NGA, GEBCO ----- twitter.com/stusontier | instagram.com/stusontierphoto