Show Description:
Vanishing Points brings together three distinct bodies of work into intimate dialog, all investigating the intricate relationship between humanity and the natural world. The series explores environmental transformation, resource extraction, and photography’s role in shaping perceptions of the landscape. The title, Vanishing Points, references not only the history and tradition of the photographic medium and its role in creating an ideology of extraction and dominance over the land but also the very real disappearance of vital habitats and species due to environmental degradation.

In Waveforms, Hobson juxtaposes Augmented Landscapes—physically altered photo assemblages—with Performed Landscapes, where manipulated prints are photographed in the studio. This series emphasizes the tension between human innovation and nature’s inherent limitations. Through these hybridized landscapes, the work interrogates the human impulse to impose order on the natural world, revealing the fragile boundaries between intervention and destruction.

Hobson extends these themes through alternative, camera-less photographic processes in Sunstroke and Nocturnes, incorporating appropriated imagery of forest fires. Both projects use lumen printing, a UV exposure technique on gelatin silver paper, to create vivid, abstracted landscapes that evoke the sublime. These works combine satellite imagery with everyday materials to produce otherworldly landscapes: in Sunstroke, the layering of photographic imagery with physical objects evokes violent yet beautiful celestial bodies, while Nocturnes shifts the scale from cosmic to intimate, adding botanical imagery with the celestial and atmospheric. These experimental methods challenge traditional landscape photography, emphasizing materiality, ephemerality, and an acknowledgment of the impermanence of the natural world.

Through these interconnected bodies of work, Vanishing Points underscores the delicate balance between human ambition and the environment’s resilience.