February Issue
Issue Four

Photography

Instinct and the Garden by Amanda Tinker
(Continued)

The chaos that ensues within these manipulated spaces disrupts the sense of the sublime often associated with nature. Birds are entangled in electric wires; scaffolding obstructs the view of an orderly topiary garden; architecture rises up to meet a weather balloon or a web of tree branches. Humans shape and alter the land in vain as unpredictable weather patterns and instinctual animal behavior threaten the stability of civilization. It is a conflict that harkens back to one of the first models of civilized life. In ancient Babylon, the unruly swamplands of Mesopotamia constantly threatened to wipe out their fragile beginnings. Today, television nature programs depict the reality of a natural world as indomitable as it was some 4,000 years ago; a natural world that seems to exist through its own sheer momentum despite the control humans attempt to assert.

-Amanda Tinker

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For more info on Amanda's work, click here.