Leyla Mandel's "Synthetic Landscapes"
"Synthetic Landscapes is a photo project consisting of 12 images of artificial nature in an industrial/urban environment. My childhood consisted of outdoor activities: going on hikes, camping in the woods, spending summers swimming in ponds and long days at the beach. From 2019-2021, I was actively involved in organizing for the youth climate movement. During this time, my perception of the environment evolved. I now think of nature as a contested space. The natural world is a place of beauty and for enjoyment, but more recently it's become a series of real-estate opportunities. Through this series of images, I explore what nature looks like in the age of post-industrialization. In the face of global politics, the environment is affected by human intervention: deforestation, climate destruction and urbanization. The idea of the "landscape" is no longer idyllic forests or fields of flowers but has instead been replaced by sprawling man-made concrete buildings in an industrial setting. It seems that present day nature is best experienced and easily accessible through Google Images rather than the outside world. In this project I address how nature fits into the contemporary environment that surrounds it. Utilizing the techniques of projection mapping, and long exposure, I photographed industrial spaces at night in my hometown Watertown MA. I mainly focused my photos on the exterior of the construction company located at the intersection of Calvin and Arlington St, about a 15 minute walk from my house. The space is also surrounded by multiple parking lots and usually filled with delivery trucks. Throughout this project I was greatly inspired by guerilla projection projects including but not limited to: Dustin Klein's projected portrait of George Floyd on the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, as well as Greenpeace's usage of projection mapping in protest against the arrival of the British aircraft carrier ARK ROYAL in Hamburg harbor. I used a Pico Projector to project found web images of idyllic scenes of nature onto the different sites. These nature scenes were first heavily edited to be even more saturated and overexposed in order to exaggerate their superficial idealized characteristics. By imposing images of superficial nature in the same space as an urban landscape, my project explores what the natural environment has evolved to look like in the face of current day man-made environmental degradation."
· Materials Used: Fuji Film Digital Camera, Tripod, Pico Projector, Found images, Photoshop