This photo series was developed over a period of six months and represents an investigation into cave dwellings, and their simulations, in the built environment. Caves tend to embody the particular kind of horror embedded within the picturesque. They are both sites of safety, which resonates deep within our epigenetic memory of our earliest ‘homes,’ and of fear, as their construction of space is entirely outside our control. There is a kind of horror in the cragginess and unevenness of these spaces. Landscape architect Cathryn Dwyre describes caves as an access point to the geologic—"a human interface with geology." They disturb us because they have an unsettling temporality: they stretch us back to deep time. Both caves and their strange faux cement replications are capable of multiple temporal consciousnesses in their evocation of our deep past, as well as our fantasy/fabricated material futures. The images included are of cave houses, wine bars, venues, and ‘fake stone’ edifices. When we occupy caves in a domesticated sense, and especially when we attempt to recreate caves out of concrete, our home-making becomes a kind of concernment-with-time, where we have an embodied experience (real or invented) of the weight of geologic forces.
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Images taken in Eureka Springs, AK; Chattanooga, TN; Phoenix, AZ; West Sedona, AZ; Las Vegas, NV; and Santa Cruz, CA.
