This collection of photographs was selected for a particular editorial.
To see an alternate set of images, please see my photography website: https://bethjohnston.photography/Under-a-Pink-Sky
Under a Pink Sky
2021-Ongoing
Photography +
Interviews
Dimensions: variable
Research Topics: Regenerative Agriculture, Art as Activism (communication across political divides)
Statement:
My father; a fourth-generation farmer in southern Idaho; a conservative Republican; a retired mechanic for the US Air Guard... has shifted the family farm to regenerative agricultural practices.
Concurrently...
I; an art graduate student; an environmental justice nerd; a Democrat... began to study regenerative agriculture as a possible remedy to the climate crisis, unaware of my dad’s pivot.
For the past year I have been documenting this transition. Whenever on the farm, I join my dad on his daily routine of never ending choirs and repairs. He tells me about the soil and roots that keep water from evaporating; about worm populations; about how the hawks and beetles have begun to return. He chuckles at me lugging the cameras around; we watch a calf being born.
He tells me about the ongoing drought, about all of the farm land that is becoming asphalt next door, and how his fellow farmers, lifelong friends, now mock his decisions- for going “green.”
The sky is often pink from raging wild fires across the west. We notice that the sunsets are more colorful because of the smoke.
He's slowly selling the tractors and even his allotted water to pay for the decades of debt incurred from farming under drought conditions. The farm is in a high mountain desert, water is scarce, the land should be sagebrush habitat*, and we, descendants of pioneers carry a heavy legacy of terraforming. But we’re now part of this tangled reality, and are trying to find a way through it.
In a time of historic political division and discord across the United States, I'm interested in this moment of convergence; of agreement; of seeing with one another. Not to erase our disagreements, but to find common ground to discuss them while actively caring differently for the land and its inhabitants. My dad has agreed to do this project with me, despite our differences, or perhaps because of them. Because we both agree- its necessary- to begin the messy work- to have the hard conversations- to wrestle with the complexities while finding a way forward.
Or as Donna Haraway encourages us--
“to stay with the trouble.“
2021-Ongoing
Photography +
Interviews
Dimensions: variable
Research Topics: Regenerative Agriculture, Art as Activism (communication across political divides)
Statement:
My father; a fourth-generation farmer in southern Idaho; a conservative Republican; a retired mechanic for the US Air Guard... has shifted the family farm to regenerative agricultural practices.
Concurrently...
I; an art graduate student; an environmental justice nerd; a Democrat... began to study regenerative agriculture as a possible remedy to the climate crisis, unaware of my dad’s pivot.
For the past year I have been documenting this transition. Whenever on the farm, I join my dad on his daily routine of never ending choirs and repairs. He tells me about the soil and roots that keep water from evaporating; about worm populations; about how the hawks and beetles have begun to return. He chuckles at me lugging the cameras around; we watch a calf being born.
He tells me about the ongoing drought, about all of the farm land that is becoming asphalt next door, and how his fellow farmers, lifelong friends, now mock his decisions- for going “green.”
The sky is often pink from raging wild fires across the west. We notice that the sunsets are more colorful because of the smoke.
He's slowly selling the tractors and even his allotted water to pay for the decades of debt incurred from farming under drought conditions. The farm is in a high mountain desert, water is scarce, the land should be sagebrush habitat*, and we, descendants of pioneers carry a heavy legacy of terraforming. But we’re now part of this tangled reality, and are trying to find a way through it.
In a time of historic political division and discord across the United States, I'm interested in this moment of convergence; of agreement; of seeing with one another. Not to erase our disagreements, but to find common ground to discuss them while actively caring differently for the land and its inhabitants. My dad has agreed to do this project with me, despite our differences, or perhaps because of them. Because we both agree- its necessary- to begin the messy work- to have the hard conversations- to wrestle with the complexities while finding a way forward.
Or as Donna Haraway encourages us--
“to stay with the trouble.“