6/6/24 - Miami, FL
Artwork & Photography by Rodrigo Gaya
Edition of 3, Large Format Digital Photograph, 100mgp
"Photographs fail to convey the impressions of distance, or remoteness, and of virgin wildness which strikes the visitor who for the first time looks out across that vast expanse.” —Samuel Sanford on the Everglades in Matson and Sanford, 1913
Empty car seats lay in the sawgrass marsh in the Everglades.
Our ingenuity turning into trash, polluting our own environment and marking it off as an externality of doing business.
Settings:
Exposure Time: 1/250
Aperture: f/ 4.0
101.8mgp
Camera: FUJIFILM GFX 100
Lens Model: GF45-100mmF4 R LM OIS WR
Focal Length : 45.0 mm (35 mm equivalent: 36.0 mm)
Pixels HxW: 11648 x 8736
Here's my inability to write a concise caption:
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In the ever-evolving relationship between modernity and nature, we've come to see a drastic shift in the long-term power balance. Overcoming our "modern" techniques to control the water-flow of the mighty Everglades has been no small task, but nature has finally begun it's major comeback.
In 1947 the first canals began redirecting with canals, the natural flow of water from the overflowing Lake Okeechobee to the organic filter of tropical wetlands to the south, directly into both bodies of water surrounding the Florida Peninsula, Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. MAIN SOURCE FOR POST https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/circ1182/pdf/12Everglades.pdf
What was once the worlds largest natural drainage basin, was redirected, paved, and destroyed. I had the displeasure of having to look up, land subsidence, basically soil erosion from receding water reservoirs Effectively reducing what some researchers believe to be a possible place of the original location of the spark of life, to a amusement park.
Today, over 50% of the Everglades has been developed for urban living, farmland, and potable water. While humanity has flourished for the last century, I'm reminded of this quote in Latin from the movie Rushmore:
"Nihilo sanctum estne?" Is nothing sacred?
On a fall afternoon last year, I visited the Everglades to witness first hand the power of man's destructive ego. Our habit of destroying foundational ecosystems has crested, leaving us remnants of a land cut in half.
Just passed the Micosukee Resort, north of Krome Detention Center, lies pump 5334-FL90, north of the Tamiami Trail. Intersecting straight across the whole Everglades in the area, the hard contrast between man and land couldn't be more evident.
-Rodrigo
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