Artist Statement

I am examining our connection to the land through a series of work using collage of black and white aerial and familial photographs.
The aerial photograph is a commonplace article with a given function. It reveals the marks we make building shelter, planting and fracturing the surface with roadways, a record of a given moment in time. My collages transform the content of the photos, telling the story of people and land, an interconnection both lifelong and temporary.
I am interested in our relationship with the land and explore this idea by integrating pieces of photographs of people, roadways, fields and buildings into a collage, often combining aerial and elevation perspective together into one image. Land and people are unified through the absence of colour to express our close bond. I explore visual impact by shifting back and forth between large contrasts in scale and value of the imagery. I fracture faces, bodies and reform them around the roadways and landscape. My family history inspires me. By reassembling the subject of the photos, I create a narrative of my heritage as it relates to the lives of my ancestors and their assimilation of land. I explore the subtle integration of imagery by matching clothing texture to land where it is difficult to distinguish the difference between land and human. Parts of bodies are revealed while others remain concealed; I am exploring where people and land intersect.

Kimberly Tucker