By New Orleans Museum of Art
Russell Lord, Curator of Photographs, New Orleans Museum of Art
Over the past seven years, artist Tina Freeman has photographed the Louisiana wetlands and Arctic and Antarctic glaciers. In Lamentations, Freeman pairs images from each place in a series of diptychs that function as stories about climate change, ecological balance, and the connectedness of things across time and space. These photographs make plain the crucial, threatening, and global dialogue between water in two physical states.
20140225_Jökulsárólon_069 / 20140418_Avoca_Island_377 by Tina FreemanNew Orleans Museum of Art
As a native of New Orleans, Freeman has long been inspired by the beauty of the coastal wetlands. Lamentations was born out of her concern for those wetlands as the sea level rises.
Lamentations (installation view ~ maps)New Orleans Museum of Art
These two charts, included at the beginning of the exhibition show the loss of the wetlands between 1934 (left) and 2019 (right).
20180402_Svalbard_103 / 20170404_Wetland_Aerials_002 (2017/2018) by Tina FreemanNew Orleans Museum of Art
The relationship between Freeman's images underscores the connection between melting ice and the rising sea level. Here, sea ice breaking apart in the Arctic is paired with fractured wetlands near New Orleans.
The pairs often have visual as well as conceptual relationships. This one operates almost like a puzzle piece with its mate, as if this gap in the ice...
...could be filled with the landforms of the wetlands near New Orleans.
20150624_Ilulissat_Greenland_701 / 20100625_GrandIsle_015 (2010/2015) by Tina FreemanNew Orleans Museum of Art
Freeman noticed other connections dictated by the environment in both locations. In Greenland and Louisiana, graves are above ground because there is no workable earth to dig into in either location.
20180401_Svalbard_804 / 20140417_Avoca_Island_179 (2017/2018) by Tina FreemanNew Orleans Museum of Art
Although Freeman's work is largely about loss, she also seeks to highlight the beauty in each location, be it the pancake ice forming in Svalbard in the Arctic.....
...rolling gently with a wave entering the bottom of the frame...
...or a host of irises on Avoca Island in Louisiana.
20140222_Dritvik_016 / 20130911_Louisiana_Deltas_270 (2013/2014) by Tina FreemanNew Orleans Museum of Art
During her work for this project, Freeman produced pictures on land, from boats, and from the air, giving viewers a chance to understand the landscape in a different way. Here ice is forming in Iceland (left)...
..while these round tufts of land indicate healthy, building wetlands.
20140225_Jökulsárólon_069 / 20140418_Avoca_Island_377 by Tina FreemanNew Orleans Museum of Art
Lamentations (installation view advance and retreat chart)New Orleans Museum of Art
The exhibition closes with a massive wall graphic about glacial retreat and advancement. The slim column on the left...
Lamentations (installation view chart)New Orleans Museum of Art
...includes a list of the 136 alpine glaciers that have advanced since first observed, while the much longer list on the right...
...details the 2138 alpine glaciers that have retreated since first observed, making plain the vast scale of glacial retreat and the threat it poses to the Louisiana coastline, thousands of miles away.
All photographs are courtesy of the artist. The exhibition is organized by the New Orleans Museum of Art and is supported by the A. Charlotte Mann and Joshua Mann Pailet Endowment.
