Mother Earth: Nevertheless She Persisted

• Prize
  Gold in Fine Art/Collage
• Jury Top 5 Selection

  Alessandro Scali

• Photographer
  Diana Cheren Nygren
• Photo Date
  2023

I feel an awe in the face of open landscapes and humanity seems small and insignificant. There have been thirty-seven epochs in Earth's history. We have been part of two. I mounted scenes of human habitation behind acrylic and affixed them within sweeping desert landscapes. The images push out onto hand-painted frames, alluding to the next chapter in the planet's history. In spite of human activity, the Earth continues to transform. Its inhabitants cannot escape its permanence, and the power it has to shape their existence. As nature reinvents itself, can we adapt with it?

Diana Cheren Nygren is a fine art photographer from Boston, Massachusetts. Her work explores the visual character of place defined through physical environment and weather. Place has implications for our experience of the world, and reveals hints about the culture around it. Diana was trained as an art historian with a focus on modern and contemporary art, and the relationship of artistic production to its socio-political context. Her emphasis on careful composition in her photographic work, as well as her subject matter, reflects this training.