Ryan Shultis’ work excavates memory and material, confronting the forces that shape and scar the land. His photographs are not mere representations but physical traces, documents of time, erosion, and intervention. Fire, water, and chemical treatments alter the images, embedding the elemental forces that govern the landscapes they depict. Each photograph serves as both a witness and an artifact, carrying the weight of destruction and the quiet persistence of renewal.
Shultis’ work resists finality, with images that evolve in dialogue between surface and image, presence and absence. The ecological subjects he works with, such as burned forests, weathered rocks, and decaying plant material, are monuments to loss and resilience, where the past inscribes itself into the earth. The marks of charcoal, flower petals, and chemicals mirror the gestures of his process and human actions on the planet, collapsing the distance between the subject and the medium. In this sense, nature becomes an index, serving as a record of time and transformation, a physical trace of forces that have shaped both the land and the images.
At a time of accelerating environmental change, Shultis’ practice speaks to the fragility and endurance of the natural world. His work interrogates not what is lost, but what remains, inviting us to see, question, and recognize our role in the landscapes we shape and inherit.
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Ryan Shultis 