RUTH PARISH
Composite photographs
RUTH PARISH
COMPOSITE PHOTOGRAPHS
​​​​
LITHO  reflects upon our culture in the speculative mirror of our own archaeology.

Homage, 2019, digital composite photograph ©Ruth Parish.
All images ©2007- 2022 Ruth Parish.

​​​​​​​​
When archaeologists dig through our leftovers they will have their hands full.

Leftovers is a series of archival digital prints of photographic composites dealing with an imagined future archeology.

Regarding existential environmental issues, policymakers see no evil, and look no further than the next scandal, earnings or election cycle. They could benefit from a little perspective.

I was twelve years old when I realized that time is way bigger than we are. A call went out for volunteers to excavate an ancient site just ahead of roadbuilding, and my family were soon brushing dirt from our sections of grid. Uncovering tiny shards and lost baubles dropped by people close to two thousand years earlier, I wondered if I’d ever lost a coin or marble that would show up one day. When archeologists sift through the dust of the twenty-first century, what will they uncover? There are more people on earth than ever, making and discarding things every day. What clues, ruins and treasures will we leave? What will our leftovers say about us when we’re dust?
​
Our culture, so reliant on constant growth, demands we consume a lot of stuff. That stuff wears out, goes out of fashion, gets replaced by faster, smarter, bigger stuff. For our continual progress, science has awarded humans with a geological age, the Anthropocene. That makes me think about the human parts of the fossil record that will someday define us. Not just our teeth and our bones, but our abiding, persistent leftovers. Archeologists will have their hands full.

Leftovers is a series of digital composite photographs depicting an imagined future archaeology, the archaeology of us. The photographs, a figurative fossil record, are thick with layers. The resulting images are closer kin to painting, bowing to Edvard Munch and Mark Rothko. The pristine natural elements of rock, leaves and water are masked and blended with images of manmade debris: leaf springs, headlights, plastic packaging. Juxtaposition of varied perspectives, subjects and scales are puzzling and invite active examination and interpretation. The viewer takes on the role of archaeologist, sussing out just what happened here.
​
Multiple exposures are combined digitally, worked until they work in a painterly way. Archival digital prints are 21 x 14 inches.

Leftovers, a body of composite photographs 
examining our legacy in the plastic age ​