Artificial Landscapes: The Greenhouse Project

Nature and more over by landscape design have always enchanted me. This attempt of men to dominate, to shape and control nature is not a recent thing, for a very long time we have this need to dominate and to reaffirm our power over nature.

This phenomenon happens with greenhouses with in another level, where besides the manipulation on sizes and specimen of plants used, there is the creation of the whole environment with controlled temperature and light. It is like a magical place hidden from the rest, a sort of bubble.

The fogginess that happens in the lenses is due the change of temperature, is used in my favor as a way to reaffirm the fact that this is not a natural environment at the same time that gives a sense of dream and imagination.

Reflecting over this matter, it came to me a suggestion where it will happen an inversion. At this moment there are few artificial landscapes and many natural ones. In maybe 60, 80 years from now, because of global warming, deforestation and other threats, this situation might invert and we will have more artificial and only a few real, natural landscapes. This few real ones, will be protected and closed for the public just like the Lascaux caves (quoted by Baudrillard in “Simulacra and Simulation”); and there will be a reproduction, or a simulacrum of them, so that we may experience the ancient real landscapes.

In this body of work I present a few photographs of The Greenhouse Project taken in different Greenhouses in New York. Alluring the geometrical shapes and the relationship between natural and false, real and simulation, fake and simulacrum.

Archival Inkjet on cotton paper, 2013-2014
51x76 cm | 20x30"