Rift/Fault is a study of the shifting land-based tectonic edges of the North American Continental Plate in California and Iceland. Rift refers to where the North American Plate meets the Eurasian Plate, along the Mid-Atlantic Rift in Iceland. Fault refers to the San Andreas Fault, where the North American and Pacific Plates meet. Tectonic plates slide along the mantle of our earth, underneath our oceans, our land, our homes. Tectonic plate edges are geologically active - they spread, move, erupt, and tremble. Their behavior is for the most part unpredictable, and wholly uncontainable. And while boundaries upon the land are often contested, politicized, and fought over, tectonic plate edges remain immune to any human efforts of control. In this series I looked for the visual traces (or not) of the tectonic plate edges upon the land, as well the structures and uses of the built landscape upon these edges. The pairing of images allows for a dialogue between the wild and the contained, the fertile and the barren, the geologic and the human. These dichotomies create a visual tension that questions the uneasy relationship between geologic force, and the limits of human intervention.
