Nathan Levig

My work centers around a deep connection to land and self, creating personal truths and using fictional storytelling devices in conversation with the land through various photographic methods. We often forget about the hidden human imprint on the land, as those imprints are erased over the years. I learn about these imprints through the history of land, but also through cultural paradigms that shape how we live our lives, and by dismantling revisionist histories that we are taught. I hope to understand how gaze theory impacts how we perceive ourselves and the world around us, specifically how the male gaze is proliferated through media and popular culture. Movement and dance have become an integral part of my practice, as they have been throughout my life; I use them as a tool to explore my own identity, my relationship to the land, and to forge connections in my community. A colonial gaze and language model have often been applied to land-based photography, particularly in how we describe these types of images and how they are made. Specifically, in the words we use to describe the act of photography, like capture, take, and shoot, which can have violent connotations. Instead, we can use words like find, make, and document. Using photography to deepen my understanding of self and the places I inhabit, I hope to start a long process of decolonizing my personal framework and the language I use, in the hope that others might be inspired to do so too. My practice brings together community to create work with them, through collaborative dance, direct political and environmental action, and collective experience and resistance.