"Outside of Time"
“Everything that moves, whether animate or inanimate, is a flow system. All flow systems generate shape and structure in time in order to facilitate this movement across landscape filled with resistance or friction. The designs we see in nature are not a result of chance. They arise naturally, spontaneously, because they enhance access to flow in time.”
– Adrian Bejan, Design in Nature, 2012.
“Stability, constancy, and strength” – words that describe the rocky landscapes I photograph; they appear immovable and unyielding, yet in reality they exist within a slow progression of time, incrementally changing, or being changed, by their environment and other events that occurred over millions of years. Within the present-day strata, I discover evidence of a violent beginning; of being molded, ground down, tossed, split, folded and bent.
I consider our traditional perception of time, and how we to measure it to the scale of our own existence. But describing geological history in human terms is inadequate and impossible. The timelines are incomprehensible – eons, eras, millions and billions of years - and the scenes as photographed are disorienting. Am I viewing the remains of a distant, uninhabited age, or are these landforms indicative of what a future world might look like? Has anyone stood in this spot before I did, and if so, who? Simply by being here, have I altered this place…will that rock, that tree, that ocean, become different in some way because of my presence? The earth has now entered a geological period where human activity has a significant impact on its natural processes and we are unsure of what the future holds. There is an assumption that these influences are permanent and cannot be undone, yet these landscapes seem to suggest otherwise. Perhaps the answer is much simpler – that the earth is patient and will carry on in spite of us, in a never-ending process of transformation that is outside our time.
Image Galleries: Georgian Bay Newfoundland