Zac Tomaszewski
Landscap Eulogy
November 2022
The following projects was supported by Create NSW
All the photographs in Landscape Eulogy were taken within a deforested lot of Belanglo State Forest in the Southern Highlands (Gandangara), NSW. My reasoning behind this specific site is that it is emblematic of our interconnected relationship with nature. Belanglo State Forest is a commercial forest comprised of an introduced species of trees (radiata pines) where the unending process of growth and death unfolds. This makes it the ideal location to confront some of our false notions about humans’ relationship with nature.
Rather than representing a tree stump exclusively as a symbol of human destructiveness, I intend to convey the simultaneous beauty in a tree stump. In doing so, this collection of similar scenes rejects the cliché of “Man vs nature” and proposes that we are guilty of nature’s destruction but not separate from nature. This fictitious distinction between humans and nature stems from naturalistic fallacy, whereby we think that since humanity harms the land, that we then cannot be part of it. The photographs challenge this idea by emulating a connection between us and this distressed land. My hope is that through an attitude of one-ness, we may resurrect our respect for an injured land.
Poster by David Susyasa
