Extinction Book

extinction
the world without us
thomas gauthier
davide galandini
rosie barnes
adam reynolds
gaëtan chevrier
pietro motisi
Cristian Ordóñez
francesco merlini
alessio pellicoro
shanna merolA
gian marco sanna
daniel kariko
MICHELE VITTORI
GEORG KATSTALLER
SÉBASTIEN ARRIGHI
MADELiNE CASS
NICOLA AVANZINELLI
Leslie Hakim-Dowek
HANS WILSCHUT
FLEUR JAKOBS
ROBERTO VITO D’AMICO
Charles BouchaïB
ANDREA BUZZICHELLI
STEFANIA ORFANIDOU
STEVE DAVIS
ELBA COLLECTIVE
LORENZO LEONE
SARA NICOMEDI
DAWN ROE
GIOVANNI PRESUTTI

“Prometheus’s triumph has been all too overwhelming.”
– Günther Anders, On Promethean Shame

thomas gauthier
davide galandini
rosie barnes
adam reynolds
gaëtan chevrier
pietro motisi
Cristian Ordóñez
francesco merlini
alessio pellicoro
shanna merolA
gian marco sanna
daniel kariko
MICHELE VITTORI
GEORG KATSTALLER
SÉBASTIEN ARRIGHI
MADELINE CASS
NICOLA AVANZINELLI
Leslie Hakim-Dowek
HANS WILSCHUT
FLEUR JAKOBS
ROBERTO VITO D’AMICO
Charles BouchaïB
ANDREA BUZZICHELLI
STEFANIA ORFANIDOU
STEVE DAVIS
ELBA COLLECTIVE
LORENZO LEONE
SARA NICOMEDI
DAWN ROE
GIOVANNI PRESUTTI
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04
A few months ago, I went for several days in the Jura region in France.
Having brought with me Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, a book by David
Treuer addressing the theme of the Native Americans, I then began to think
of these people. While walking in the mountains, I had this strange feeling
that the Native Americans were hidden in these mountains and could arise
from nowhere. That I could find traces of their passages. By the biggest
coincidence, my camera started to make images with a strange rendering.
The idea then came to me to work on a series addressing the notion of
the dream. This series is visual poetry, a photographic and contemplative
narration including autobiographical elements. It does not address a subject
in the classical sense of the term. I put in pictures my feelings. In this work I
approach the notions of place and time. Timelessness is a key element of the
series. Getting lost in time and space is a feeling that I appreciate. The series
sails between dream and reality. The real is the raw material with which I create
a mystery. I mix everyday banality with intriguing images to build a personal
work that gives the viewer the freedom to make their own opinion. I approach
the theme of extinction with the notion of the imaginary since the Native
Americans peoples have not disappeared.
Seules les étoiles resteront
THOMAS GAUTHIER
gauthierphotographie.com

12
Vinewood Project is laboratory of research on our perception of landscape and
it aims to narrow the existing gap between what is real and what is distorted
mythology in the eye of the reader. A visual tool which arises as a necessary
reaction to the catastrophe which characterizes the geography of everyday,
winking in its olderly geometry, even when it is exploited and poisoned. Soil
consumption, mining industry, intensive and monocratic agricolture; this sort
of white noise spreads unabated forever changing our relationship with nature
and environment. Therefore change the way of seeing the world through a daily
practice of research and artistic intervention.
Vinewood
DAVIDE GALANDINI
davidegalandini.it

20
I began this work over 20 years ago whilst studying at the University of
Brighton. The work examines - using everyday, commonly seen examples -
the idea of human ascendancy over the natural world – our need to manage,
control and contain it. I have continued to add to the project. I originally called
the series ‘Human Nature’ and thought of it as ‘a ‘tragi-comedic’ study of our
relationship with the natural world’. However, as the evidence mounts and
with it our increased understanding of what is happening to the planet and our
impact upon it, has made me see it as something much darker. And it feels
more relevant than ever. Eco-anxiety is a recognised and increasingly common
condition. The existential fear of climate breakdown and our own mortality -
the end of the world, the world that we have created. And as the evidence is
laid bare, it is a very uncomfortable realisation. We can stuff a dead animal, put
it in a box, we can build dams, we can use nature as camouflage. But we have
exploited and abused it for our own convenience, sanitizing, packaging and
perfecting it to our needs and desires. These everyday details remind us, as we
stare out over the precipice with an increasing sense of unease and fear, that
we’ve overlooked the natural balance of things, the natural order. We’re not in
control at all. We’ve been kidding ourselves all along.
A Peculiar Convenience
ROSIE BARNES
rosiebarnes.com

28
At the height of the Cold War, the United States deployed thousands of
Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) in a network of underground
complexes across the American landscape. These nuclear weapons made up
one part of America’s vast deterrent force as it faced off against its ideological
rival, the Soviet Union, until its collapse in 1992. And as the Cold War itself has
faded from memory, so too have the lessons and fears these weapons once
elicited in the general public. Yet the issue of unchecked nuclear proliferation
has returned that fear to the forefront.
With much of America’s Cold War-era nuclear arsenal deactivated and
dismantled today, there are a growing number of former missile sites whose
mission is to preserve the history and memory of the period. These frozen
time capsules are open to the public, catering to an array of nostalgic “nuclear
tourists.” As “Shrines to an Armageddon”, they preserve the dramatic vestiges
of a power that can destroy the world. The sites stand sentinel as potent
reminders of American military might, but also serve as a cautionary tale for
future generations. Two such sites, the Minuteman Missile National Historic
Site in South Dakota and the Titan Missile Museum in Arizona, are the only
remaining ICBM sites in the United States that not only allow visitors into
the underground launch control center, but also to come face to face with a
(nonfunctioning) intercontinental ballistic missile as well.
The project’s title refers to the Air Force’s mandatory two-person buddy
system in place at all ICBM sites. This applied both to the on-duty officers on
24-hour alert in the launch control center and to the work crews tasked with
maintaining the missiles. The policy was intended as a safety precaution and
as a safeguard against potential sabotage. The images pair America’s most
prolific ICBM (the Minuteman II) with its most powerful (the Titan II) and offer a
calculated look at the nuts and bolts of Mutually Assured Destruction, the mad
logic behind nuclear deterrence.
No Lone Zone
ADAM REYNOLDS
adamreynoldsphotography.com

36
The Earth is this anthropized planet we share and whose future livability we
must ensure. The rise of so-called natural disasters, hurricanes, cyclones,
tsunamis, earthquakes, remind us of the vulnerability of inhabited spaces,
and of the interdependence of human and non-human beings living there.
Therefore planetary urbanization choices are paramout. Decisions to build in
the most fragile areas - behind dikes, below sea level, on geological faults -
which are most often destroyed, remind us of the limits of the act of building.
And these decisions are those that will or will not impact our relationships
with the built environment.In this regard, we note today the recurrent choice
to focus on improving techniques and engineering to protect ourselves from
this planet, rather than to evolve towards strategies for a dwelling that has
been conceived as fragile. Hong Kong tells us one of those stories of conquest.
The British colonists who approached the shores of this coast described a
bare rock with steep slopes. This mythical story is well known, it is the story
of the one who arrives and “discovers” a land without history, that “gives
itself” to colonization. The fact remains that British colonization is sporadic,
there are only a few buildings on the hills and along the shores. An image that
is totally obsolete today for those who know Hong Kong, like many, from its
stereotypical image of gigantic towers in front of steep mountains, covered
with dense forests. Hong Kong intrigues architects and urban planners with
the huge contradictions that shape the experience of this city. The incessant
artificial embankments are carried out at the same time as the sanctuary of
hectares of nature, in the same remoteness of this environment. The obligation
to build high, due to constraints of available surface and in order to appear as
a world-class metropolis, creates a singular urban experience, exotic for the
Western pedestrian: that of the vertical street. The ultra-density of the city is
denounced as an example of unsustainable development yet is also valued as
a laboratory of the extreme compactness of the living space. But the recent
movements of demand from civil society for participation in the definition of
major projects are the main driving force for change in the future of the city.
(text : Anne Bossé / architect, doctor of geography, researcher of CRENAU.)
À l’origine
Gaëtan Chevrier
gaetanchevrier.com

44
The photographs in this body of work titled Sicilia Fantasma, which literally
means “Ghost Sicily” represents a collection of personal visions about Sicily,
gathered between 2012 and 2018. In an attempt to represent the Land through
a series of landscapes, the desire is to generate a relationship between the
observer and the represented spaces which stimulates a delving beyond the
surface of the ‘scape’. In this way establishing a critical point of reflection on
who we are in relation to the characteristics of our spaces and our time. The
critique is expressed as a dialectical knot, rather than an assumption; elements
of concern more than a complaint, useful to gather questions and political
thoughts. As David Goldblatt said, «Events in themselves are not so much
interesting to me as the conditions that led to the events», in that way this work
represents something like a mirror, which reflects on belonging to a land - an
exercise in reading space and that which occurs in it, to better understand and
reposition our actions, feelings, relationships and responsibilities toward the
land, so ourselves.
Sicilia Fantasma
PIETRO MOTISI
pietromotisi.it

52
Into the wind, the wild and beyond. Following nature, light, and traces.
An ongoing body of work created while following the traditional road-trip
experience through the American Landscape. Understanding a landscape
in flux, the traces humans leave behind, the way mankind has shaped the
land and how nature takes over the complex situations our species produce.
Curious of the transitional reality of current times, the risks of the environment,
and the rise and fall of the human condition. This work does not focus
primarily on a political environmental view of the land, but it rather studies the
perception of the vast scenery, emptiness, history, peripheries and apparent
relationship with the land that surrounded us throughout the journey.
We are constantly on trial
Cristian Ordóñez
cristianordonez.com

60
The Flood
FRANCESCO MERLINI
Late on 13 June 2015 heavy rainfalls hit Tbilisi and the nearby areas. When
people woke up in the morning 19 people would be dead, many families made
homeless, a zoo destroyed and a city in shock. A landslide was released above
the village of Akhaldaba, about 20 km southwest of Tbilisi. The landslide,
carrying 1 million m3 of land, mud, and trees, moved down into Tbilisi and
dammed up the Vere river at two points, first at a 10m wide channel at
Tamarashvili Street and then at a channel under Heroes’s Square, a major
traffic hub. The resulting flood inflicted severe damage especially on the Tbilisi
Zoo; The city briefly became a wilderness full of dangerous beasts. The zoo
lost more than 300 animals, nearly half of its inhabitants: the majority were
killed by flooding. Several surviving inhabitants of the zoo—a hippopotamus,
big cats, wolves, bears, and hyenas—escaped from destroyed pens and cages
to the streets of Tbilisi and a police unit was employed to round them up. Some
were killed, others were recaptured and brought back to the zoo. The media
ran footage showing the hippopotamus making its way to flooded Heroes’
Square, one of Tbilisi’s major roadway hubs, where it was subdued with a
tranquilizer dart. On 17 June a white tiger remaining on the loose attacked
and mortally wounded a man in a storehouse near the zoo. The animal was
eventually shot dead by the police. An African penguin was found at the Red
Bridge border crossing with Azerbaijan, having swum some 60 km south from
Tbilisi. Many Georgians condemned the foreign media’s focus on the zoo and
their indifference to the stories of the human victims. Catholicos Patriarch Ilia
II, an influential head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, in his Sunday sermon,
blamed the floods on the ’sin’ of the former Communist regime which, he said,
built the zoo in its current location using the money raised from destroying
churches and melting down their bells. The causes of such a disaster, more
realistically, can be found in the lack of water holding capacity along the rivers
course due to deforestation, Soviet-era infrastructure, poor maintenance, weak
planning controls and extensive and often illegal development that impacted
the riverbed. This project brought me to photograph the zoo and the animals
that survived, the place where the new park will be built, the valley where Vere
river flows, the spot where the landslide originated and some of the places
where the topic of old infrastructures and of illegal residential development are
more evident. Even if some years have passed and most of the consequences
of the flood are no more visible, I have come across landscapes that suggest
that some kind of catastrophe has just happened. Consequently I decided to
create a narration that blends together a documentary account of the tragedy’s
aftermath and a visual reflection on the present Georgian panorama.
francescomerlini.com

68
A project that aims to examine those so-called microworlds born on the
margins of a very complex urban system and which, over time, have assumed
the unlikely forms of autonomous reality and detached from the central
city pole, Taranto. Marginal peripheral districts (such as ‘Paolo VI, Tamburi,
Salinella’) which constitute the ‘internal suburbs’ and which are distributed
as ‘urban filaments’ in industrial areas. A landscape contaminated by the
processes of industrial expansion, as well as urban/residential of a popular
type... A clear example of Shrinking City, a city in serious demographic
contraction: a phenomenon that initially spread in the United States and
caused by the sudden conversion of the ‘industrial’ reality to ‘post-industrial’
(examples are Saint Louis in Missouri; Youngstown, Cincinnati, Cleveland and
Toledo in Ohio; Pittsburg in Pennsylvania; Detroit in Michigan). The case of
Taranto appears as a wrong total systemic conversion that has not yet fully
occurred due to the various industrial realities present, active and inactive,
which have always represented an ecological threat to the landscape and
above all to the quality of life of the inhabitant forced to live too close to them.
The other Red Desert,
a place of ‘Microworlds’
ALESSIO PELLICORO
instagram.com/a_pellicoro

76
The images in We All Live Downwind are culled from daily headlines –
inspired by both global and grassroots struggles against the forces of
privatization in the face of disaster capitalism. In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi
Klein writes about the free market driven exploitation of disaster-shocked
people and countries saying, “the original disaster—the coup, the terrorist
attack, the market meltdown, the war, the tsunami, the hurricane — puts the
entire population into a state of collective shock”. The scenes in We All Live
Downwind, have been carved out of dystopian landscapes in the aftermath of
these events. On the surface, rubble hints at layers of oil and shale, cracked
and bubbling from the earth below. Rising from another mound, rows of empty
mobile homes bake beneath the summer sun. The bust of small towns left dry
in the aftermath of supply and demand. In this place, only fragments of people
remain, their mechanical gestures left tending to the chaos on auto. Reduced
to survival, their struggle against an increasingly hostile environment goes
unnoticed. Beyond the upheaval of production a bending highway promises
never ending expansion - and that low rumble you hear to the west is getting
louder.
We All Live Downwind
Shanna Merola
shannamerola.virb.com

84
The Malagrotta Dump is the main long-term storage site for undifferentiated
urban solid waste from the city of Rome. It is located in the western suburbs
of the city, in the estate of Malagrotta. The name derives from the Latin Mola
Rupta (“broken wheel”), a name originated by a broken grinding wheel on the
nearby stream Rio Galeria. According to some, the largest landfill in Europe.
240 hectares, between 4500 and 5000 tons of waste were dumped every day.
In 2013, Italy was denounced at the European Court of Justice by the European
Environment Committee as part of the waste discharged at the landfill did not
undergo the biological treatment (MBT) required by the European regulations
to reduce the volumetric consistency of waste, and facilitate their possible
recovery. On January 9, 2014, the NOE (ecological department of carabinieri),
commanded by Sergio De Caprio, known as “Ultimo” (“The Last”), stops 7
people. Among others the owner of the dump Manlio Cerroni, know as “Re
della monnezza” (“the king of garbage”) and the former president of the Lazio
region Bruno Landi.
Since its closure the situation has not improved. Abandoned waste of all kinds
are still visible in the areas surrounding the landfill. Malagrotta is black water
flows, worn tires, rubbles, abandoned cars, dead palms, ashes. A wounded
ground. In the night the air is filled with a thick cloud of smoke and stench. It’s
the city of snow.
Malagrotta
GIAN MARCO SANNA
gianmarcosanna.com

92
This long-term project is an investigation of our relationship to our surrounding
landscape through micro images of locally found insects and other arthropods.
My images utilize the combination of Scanning Electron Microscope and
optical Stereo Microscope, in order to achieve a “portrait”-like effect inspired
by the tradition of 17th Century Dutch Masters. Most of the species of
insects are likely to disappear before they are even discovered and described
by entomologists. Our planet is a home for to an estimated five, perhaps
ten million different kinds of insects, not including other arthropods. Most
scientists agree that there are more undiscovered species than identified ones
so far. It is estimated that they represent 80 percent of all the species in the
world. And yet, in spite of their numbers and variety, they are vanishing at an
alarming rate. From newsworthy bee colony collapses to recent noticeable
absence of dead insects on our windshields, some species fell by 75% to
90% in the last 20 years. As they are not charismatic megafauna, theirs is a
silent extinction. An elimination from the natural record that is invisible to an
average person, and caused by habitat loss, pesticides, herbicides, and climate
change. These little (and sometimes not so little) invaders are natural product
of our own occupation of their habitat. As we keep expanding our subdivisions
to the outskirts of towns, we inhabit recently altered environments. This
anthropomorphic presentation of our closest, often invisible, co-habitants in a
humorous, quasi-scientific way, is an invitation to consider the evidence of the
human impact on the landscape as we constantly redraw boundaries between
us and the natural environment.
Suburban Symbiosis
Silent Extinction
DANIEL KARIKO
danielkariko.com

100
In the contemporary world, the imbalances in the relationship between
man and Nature are beginning to have devastating effects. In wildness
is the salvation of the world, wrote H.D. Thoreau, there is, therefore, an
urgent need to rediscover a new ecological consciousness in response to
the anthropocentric vision that has designed modernity. The series, still in
progress, is a personal visual diary of a “traversing” of the central Italian
Apennines between the territories of Umbria, Abruzzo, Lazio, and Marche.
Walking and crossing territories as a method to regain the true meaning of
nature, and to rethink man and the environment as a single complex organism.
Walking
MICHELE VITTORI
michelevittori.com

108
Mount Igman, near Sarajevo, was one of the sports venues in the Winter
Olympics ’84 in Ex-Yugoslavia. Eight years later, it became a deadly war zone
during the siege of Sarajevo (1992-1996). It seems, as strange as it sounds, that
war and the Olympic games have something in common. Partially because war
creates a sense of unity in the face of a collective threat. Just like the Olympic
games, it binds people together – not just the army engaged in battle, but the
whole community. However, games do not contribute to humans extinction,
wars do. Athletes from different parts of the world arrived at the Olympic
hotel on the mount, Igman, to participate in peaceful competition. Eight years
later soldiers were hiding in its ruins, searching for cover from artillery shells.
Mount Igman symbolizes a fragile line between war and peace. The fact that
so many societies all over the world fail to stop repeating history, by continuing
to engage in massive violent conflicts, shows us that mankind lives in a loop it
can’t escape.
‘84
Georg Katstaller
georgkatstaller.com

116
Shivers is a series of landscape fragments that deal with scenes and objects
captured in the truth of their apparitions. National Park, wasteland, rare
specimens, and details representative of the synthetic reality that emanates
from many occupied territories. This familiarity reveals here a few traces,
shocks, sounds and expenditure of energy that have charged the texture of the
landscape, as would the shiver do, passing through once body in the dark.
Shivers
SÉBASTIEN ARRIGHI
sebastienarrighi.com

124
How lonely, to be a marsh
MADELINE CASS
Salt is in our blood. Fundamental to human life, for millennia we have sought
out salt. One of the most endangered ecosystems on the Great Plains are
1,000 acres of inland saline wetland made from Mesozoic-era salt deposits
in southeastern Nebraska (in the midwest of the United States). The water
there is nearly as salty as the ocean. The wetlands once numbered between
16,000 and 60,000 acres (it seems to be debated) – but now they have almost
completely been erased. As the city of Lincoln expands, the threats to wildlife
and wetlands multiply. Much of this habitat has been degraded or destroyed
by drainage from surrounding farms, and the growth of the city. Many of
the acres of marsh have been turned into landfills and car lots, and housing
developments - houses that are sitting seemingly empty and unsold. Few
people among the local population seem to be aware of the wetlands, and
even fewer have visited them, despite existing a just few miles from downtown
Lincoln. Their biological importance is often overlooked and ignored by the
historically agricultural community. The abundant mud flats of the saline
wetlands are rich with a variety of wildlife. It’s common to see a pair of
nesting bald eagles, a coyote or red foxes. It is more difficult to spot the Salt
Creek tiger beetle - a critically endangered subspecies that is endemic to
the wetlands. The beetle is considered a bio-indicator species, its presence
signaling the existence of a healthy saline wetland. This body of work is a
personification of place, an emotional reverie on a salt marsh near Lincoln,
Nebraska. It is an attempt to engender an elusive place not readily known – at
once both heartfelt and heartbroken. how lonely to be a marsh consists of
original poetry and photography, including botanical and zoological specimens,
and early 1900s glass plate photographs and journal excerpts by pioneering
prairie ecologist Frank Shoemaker (1875–1948). He is the namesake for the
main section of the saline wetlands in Lancaster County – Frank Shoemaker
Marsh. This ecological story, like so many others, is one of destruction,
exploitation, and misunderstanding. Cass’ work calls to mind an issue that is
not just about the salt marshes or wildlife but how people in the Midwest and
the rest of America view the role of protecting irreplaceable land. Protections
for endangered species as a whole are being weakened by the Trump
administration. Additionally, a recently proposed development nearby would
almost certainly spell disaster for the tiger beetle and many other species. If
we are to save critical habitat, it must be placed in a new context, one in which
our awareness of it and relationship to it is based on the personal and poetic
rather than the profitable & recreational.
madelinecass.com

132
Imagine to take your subconscious and immerse it under the water. Suspend
your breath. Suspend the wind. This is where my mind goes when I see
Avanzinelli’s work. - Federica Chiocchetti, Photocaptionist - After graduating
from the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara in 2006, I currently live and work in
Paris. My research explores the emergence of an apnoeic subconscious within
memory in everyday life and how it relates with momentary lapses of intimacy.
I work with images and texts through a non-linear and fragmented sequence of
visual excerpts from daily life. Like a short-circuit they navigate my mind along
an unintended path, often producing dystopian associations. I am interested
in how collective and personal memory co-exist within an individual’s mind,
at times peacefully blending, at others fighting. The theme of your open call
prompted me to question the position and role of the artist in relation to what
we tend to call ‘world’. What is the role of the artist when the ‘world’ is facing
such an urgent issue and it appears already too late to invert our descent into
the ‘eco-inferno’? Questioning the hopelessness of art in changing dangerous
tendencies or raising awareness is what preoccupies me. There seems to
be a paradox between human extinction and the yearning to document it.
Document it for whom if there is no future? It is for me also a story of the
extinction of human effort to avoid the end. We could call it ‘collective suicide’.
The precipice The instant right before was clear and all hopes were dashed.
The thud and the gray deafened the air. It’s the time when the light disappears.
Everyone was aware. The breath started to decompose.
The precipice
NICOLA AVANZINELLI
instagram.com/nicola.avanzinelli

140
Twilight island is a poetic contemplation of a time spent on a volcanic island.
This book resonates with a subtext of several themes and thresholds. A
succession of vistas from volcanic craters to desert plateaux is juxtaposed
with landmarks of memory and recreational spaces where spectacles are set
to unfold in a cycle of endless tourism. Sometimes the themes are polarised
such as the vast wilderness we live in and the coming of age of two girls, my
twin daughters; an earthly stage where generational rites and rituals have
come into being but to which, we remain largely oblivious.
In a culture terminally ill with amnesia, in which temporal boundaries have
weakened, an axis is drawn between the earthly transformations over millennia
which are laid bare on this island and our compulsive stream of capture. This
book is an attempt to provide a brief anchoring of an ever-transitory present
within the inherent silence and stillness of a photograph.
Twilight island
Leslie Hakim-Dowek
lesliehakimdowek.com

148
The World in One Place The area that is currently known as the Central
Business District has been the central area of Johannesburg nearly since
its inception. Its central location in the city as well as careful planning led to
it to be chosen as the best location for a mix of residential and commercial
development, especially during the economically prosperous 1960s and
1970s. Many large constructions were completed in this period, such as the
Carlton Centre, which is still the tallest building in Africa. Under the apartheid,
the Central Business District was classified as a whites-only area, meaning
that black people were only allowed to work and shop there, but could not
live there. It completely changed when the race segregation system ended
in 1990. In the post apartheid time the CBD became more accessible for non
white groups for both living and working. Unfortunately a crime wave swept
through the city and many businesses and people fled from areas such as
Braamfontein, Hillbrow, and Yeoville for more secured houses or offices in
the Northern Suburbs of Johannesburg. It was the start of the richest mile in
Africa, the city of Sandton. By the late 1990s, the Central Business District
became a no-go zone and a virtual ghost town. All its former glory was lost,
and the city was shattered by the loss of the Carlton Hotel. It was in 2008 when
I started to photograph the urban decay in the city of J’oburg and since then I
came back for substential working periods. Evicted buildings re-occupied by
illegal residents became the rotten teeth in the citylandscape. For more then
10 years I have been trying to understand such lack of human care that I saw in
these urban environments all over the city. 15 years of severe economical and
social problems such as poverty, housing, drugabuse and immigration had left
its marks on the health of Johannesburg. Gentrification slightly changed some
lower suburbs but the contrasts in the Central Business District only relocated.
To me the theme of human extinction is applicable the condition humaine of
Johannesburg.
The World In One Place
HANS WILSCHUT
hanswilschut.com

156
Having grown up with nature as a self-evident factor that was always present
in my life, I find it strange to notice that the meaning of the concept of nature
is changing. In our time, the most unthinkable problems can be tackled with
technology and science. But because we have these possibilities, we use it
to arrange our environment to our own taste. This of course also applies to
nature. The nature that we control and create no longer needs earth to survive,
just us. And the nature that’s out there, that does need soil to survive, is
limited by us because we keep on restricting the space it needs to grow. I
adopt the modern idea that everything is manufacturable. So I create my own
scientific experiments. In these experiments I emphasize on the aspects of
nature that we seemingly all want to get rid of: the imperfections. I take control
of specific pieces of nature and determine what happens to it. Self-invented
scientific experiments merge with the actual image of the treatment of nature
under artificial conditions. This might make it hard to distinguish between what
is being investigated in a laboratory and what is being done in my living room.
An investigation into our current view of nature: can you still speak of nature if
there is so much human influence?
Stripped of the earth
FLeUR JAKOBS
fleurjakobs.nl

164
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is the official name of the vehicles well known
as drones. Located in the south-east of Niscemi, a town of thirty thousand
inhabitants on the plateau between the Erei and Iblei mountains, near
Caltanissetta, the US military base for radio telecommunications Naval Radio
Transmitter Facility (NRTF) rises into the Sughereta Natural Reserve. Inside the
base has been recently activated the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) a
system that interfaces with all the robotic military devices, including drones.
The electromagnetic field produced by the base is perceptible beyond a radius
of 100 km, and there are numerous scientific studies that are working on the
demonstration of the impact of electromagnetism on birdlife. In particular,
groups of Sicilian environmentalists are sure that the electromagnetic field
produced by the NRTF base as well as the MUOS are diverting the migratory
flow of birds, which have always flown over those areas of Sicily.
Unmanned Pigeons introduces itself into this relationship between
telecommunications military base, electromagnetic waves and bird migrations
with the aim of visualization of these invisible effects that the massive US
militarization in Sicily causes on birdlife.
Unmanned Pigeons
ROBERTO VITO D’AMICO
robertovitodamico.it

172
Before hydroelectricity development and tourism activities, Maurienne territories
have been exploited for a long time. Roads of the Mont-Cenis have crossed
the Alps since Hannibal times. Over the years, railroad pioneers experienced
different trails in the region. Today a new passage is being dug, and it testifies
both the completion of an old transport ambition, as much as, the emergence of
global needs in moving goods. The drilling of the Lyon-Turin tunnel crystallizes
the relationship with time disparities. A coveted time, whose incompressibility
tries to be abolished by an obstinate search for speed. This is a Trans-European
essential link whose legitimacy is also reprobated. As an ephemeral compromise
between anthropic interests and natural constraints, landscapes are also the
support of economic convulsions and contain evidence of past and future
threats. To what extent can we consider that technology makes the world
suitable to live in? Is there any disconnection between economic time and
natural human timeframe? What is the threshold making a resilient environment
permanently modified and hostile for humans? Without offering direct answers,
these issues are covered throughout this series. The image approaches vary
from poetic evocation to documentary investigation.
La Pennétrie
Charles BouchaïB
charlesbouchaib.com

180
Cecina is a small river. Nowadays it is threatened, as much of its lands, by
the ‘dominant steam’ strategy - the geothermal science. However, the river is
a source of life for many organisms that risk of being forgotten. This is why
Andrea Buzzichelli chose to illustrate the whole life cycle of frogs through his
pictures. Together with his two kids, he decided to picture their evolution, the
gradual opening of life, the wonder of a slow transformation from tadpoles to
small amphibians. His photos driven by the observation of nature reveal the
amazement for something universal. A quest that goes back to our own origins.
Fragile
ANDREA BUZZICHELLI
andreabuzzichelli.it

188
Cache in computing refers to the hardware or software component that
stores data so that future requests can be served faster. It is a place where
memory is kept well-hidden from the eye of the user, yet it is all the time
present and ready to be recalled. In this project, I delve into the state of semiconsciousness,
by examining those inexplicable fragments of memory that
emerge at unexpected moments, when for a split second the perception of the
present is getting lost. I collect these fragments, that linger in the in-between
of imagination and reality and I attempt to recompose them. The result could
be described as a ‘residual’ archive, the creation of a new memory in which
familiar images that were suppressed in the subconscious - either violently due
to trauma or just because they were considered of less importance - are being
recalled back. The process involves layered transitions of consciousness, with
the aim to reach the most inaccessible data of the mind, at the place where a
personal redemption might be hidden.
Cache
Stefania Orfanidou
stefaniaorfanidou.com

196
Beauty can lurk in strange places, and I find myself drawn to landscapes which
suggest ambiguity, emptiness, and the spiritually untidy. To me, they resonate
as backdrops to stories and dreams—vague suggestions of the earth as a
temporary gesture. They are as close to nowhere as I can get.
The Western Lands
SteVE DAVIS
davis.photo

204
What happens is that even building take a long winter’s nap (go on hibernation),
we are dealing with several towns which fall asleep for a considerable amount
of time waiting to be awakened by the arrival of the tourists, the firsts quieter
and most shy than the intrusive last ones.
A forced on and off extinction, which leaves entire buildings and structures
suspended in time and space, cyclically, year by year, up to becomes a routine,
made up of preservation rituals capable of making them unrecognizable when
compared to the high season set.
They are not abandoned but frozen, they are alive but moving extremely slowly,
the architectural casing finally appears as it had been originally designed, they
show up like two-dimensional sceneries due to the limitation of the human
being interaction.
We wanted to investigate this metamorphosis, which nothing can be done
except waiting in silence, so we just sat down in this great waiting room and
look. (Elba Collective: Elisa Florian + Barbara Modolo)
Frozen Rooms
Elba collective
elisaflorian.com

212
Thekla and Moriana are two of the cities described by Italo Calvino in ‘The
invisible cities’. The first one, a city in continuous construction, wrapped
in an uninterrupted scaffolding. The second one, a two-dimensional city
characterized by opposite faces, the first shining, presentable,’façade’;
the other, the reverse, hidden, abandoned by aesthetic care. This series of
photographs is intended to represent a hypothetical journey to these places
through some of their infinite possible representations through images. A
journey that can be undertaken with the meaning given by Marcel Proust in
‘Remembrance of Things Past’ according to which “The only true voyage of
discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange
lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of
another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of
them beholds, that each of them is”. A journey that lends itself to two different
interpretations of time. An ‘evolutionary’ and progressive marked by the
appearance of nature until it prevails in parallel with the works of man. The
other, instead, is characterized by the circular time of an interrupted cycle of
construction, use, abandonment and reconstruction.
A journey to Thekla and Moriana
LORENZO LEONE
lorenzoleone.eu

220
We are currently experiencing the sixth mass extinction, two hundred species
disappear every day, the last United Nations summit on climate change stated
that we have eleven years left to avoid the catastrophe by keeping the global
temperature rise below 2 degrees.
Such awareness has led me to question my intention to become a mother
in the present historical context; through this project I analyze myself as
memories resurface and I reflect on the strength of life and on the deepest
sense of existence.
Extinction-isn’t a good title recounts three generations: that of my
grandmother, who lived in conjunction with what is considered to have marked
the beginning of the great acceleration of our era called the Anthropocene,
than that of my parents and down until today.
Through the use of representative images, self-portraits, documentary photos,
archives and collages, I analyze the relationship that exists between the past
and present, our actions today and their possible impact on future generations.
I aim to emphasize this is the time to rebuilt awareness on our actual needs,
what future we want on the Earth and how to act accordingly.
Can we transform the current climate and social crisis into something useful to
the restoration of empathy among human beings and hence allow ourselves to
evolve on a spiritual and emotional level?
Extinction-isn’t a good title
SARA NICOMEDI
saranicomediphotography.com

228
Conditions for an Unfinished Work
of Mourning: Wretched Yew
DAWN ROE
Conditions for an Unfinished Work of Mourning: Wretched Yew is the second
sequence of an ongoing series using the process of recording via photography,
film, video, and sound to draw upon the pathos embedded within sites of
sorrow and distress while revealing moments of resilience. This phase of the
project relates the taxus brevifolia genus of yew tree native to the Pacific
Northwest – known for its healing properties, and as a symbol of death and
regeneration – to my own experience in the region during a tumultuous time
when the pervasive sight of clear cut hillsides served as the visual backdrop
to personal struggles with addiction, depression, and loss. These adjacent
recollections led me to consider the cultural and ecological legacy of this
species as indicative of ongoing cycles of neglect. Though long revered by
indigenous cultures, the Pacific Yew was primarily disregarded by foresters of
the settler state as an insignificant understory component – both economically
and environmentally – until it was discovered to generate a plant alkaloid
highly effective as a chemotherapy drug. Though now synthetically produced,
a government contract with a global, pharmaceutical company resulted in the
decimation of much of the already sparse population of yew when harvesting
of its bark occurred in the 1990s. Yet, due to its indestructible nature and ability
to easily regenerate, isolated pockets of both old growth and more recently
sprouted Pacific Yew continue to thrive as vital components of the ecosystem.
During repeated trips to Oregon, a number of these trees were located. In
conjunction with video recording, sun exposed images of and around the
trunks, branches and leaves were produced over extended intervals. UVsensitive
contact printing processes were incorporated as a primary image
capture technique due to the prolonged exposure required by these methods.
The resulting imprints archive and represent duration in a manner distinct from
the moving image trace of the same instance, allowing for an examination
of the space between record and document, referencing the simultaneous
passage and persistence of time. As a straightforward yet precisely indexical
camera-less form of transcription, the use of the photogram also serves as
a deliberate nod to the DIY ethos of punk culture, connecting back to my
formative years in Portland and the musicians who are collaborating on the
soundtrack to the accompanying video work. Together, the individual project
components serve as collective acknowledgement of the unsettled grief that
permeates this mental and physical space, functioning as a set of discrete
elegies apprehending the residue of dormant trauma by making visible that
which endures.
dawnroe.com

228
The one represented in Hello Dolly is a near future in which humanity is lost and
all that remains is a frightening doll. It wanders in an apocalyptic scenario of
degradation and cement. The Earth is a pile of empty and abandoned buildings.
Dolly is the metaphysical protagonist inspired by the anthropomorphic
mannequins of Giorgio De Chirico.
Her body is an empty form without a soul, a case full of vaguely human images,
memories and sensations; an intellectual projection of man. Her anonymous
plastic shapes make humanity’s sense of bewilderment even stronger,
becoming a symbol of the consumerist era that has brought the world to its
knees, to its void.
Cinematic and literary suggestions are the basis of every image, in which the
strong reference to the sci-fi settings of Philip Dick and following dystopian
visions stand out. These are the symbols of consumerism. Stripped of their
function, they become totems worshiped by an inanimate doll, and showing a
cross-section of a future that is inexorably approaching.
Hello Dolly!
GIOVANNI PRESUTTI
giovannipresutti.com

extinction
the world without us