Natasha Rudenko
Receding Waters
California has been experiencing drought for a while. Human-fueled climate change exacerbated the unquenchable needs of the state’s agricultural complex and its constantly growing population resulting in 85% of California being designated “extreme drought” conditions in summer 2021. Seeing lakes and reservoirs that I’ve grown to love to disappear by the minute, I felt compelled to not only document but process the receding waters of California.
The documentarian nature of the project reflected in the use of the pensive analog process and a black and white medium format film is also a contemplation on the history of landscape photography, especially in the home state of Ansel Adams, and its inherent reflection of the exploitative nature of the Western relationship with the land. The introduction of the cyanotype process brings the notion of sun, climate, and change directly onto the surface of the images exposing the areas where the water is no longer and imagining how it would look like if it were there.