Thirteen Hours to Fall examines the climate crisis through investigations of contemporary and future littoral zones. This project includes large-format color photographs, collage works, sculptural photographic book forms, and 19th century-inspired salted paper prints created
with water collected at the site of a ghost forest on the eastern shore of the United States. Manifest with the sea itself as a collaborative image maker, salt from the northern Atlantic is distilled to form the photographic emulsion used to visualize the changing landscape around us.
As the climate warms, sea levels rise and saltwater encroaches on coastal communities. This is
both an ecological crisis and an environmental justice issue. Invading seawater advances and
overtakes the fresh water that deciduous trees - including pine, red maple, sweetgum and bald
cypress - rely upon for sustenance. The brackish water slowly poisons trees, decimating coastal
upland stands, leaving “ghost forests” of dead and dying timber. With saplings and mature
trees poisoned by the saltwater intrusion, the overstory disappears and saltwater marsh, with
tolerant plants like grasses and shrubs, takes over. While this transition to marsh alone isn’t
necessarily detrimental, over time the marsh is overtaken as well, leading to areas of open
water and land loss. Results of this shifting landscape include massive tree deaths, diminished
carbon storage and biodiversity, and critical impacts on local communities. Ghost forests
foretell future problems including saltwater damage to crops, contaminated drinking water,
and loss of residential and commercial land. Studies show that ecological system collapse, such
as the loss of coastal upland forests, can trigger an economic collapse.
These works ask the viewer to bear witness to the complex history of this region, a landscape
dramatically altered overtime by the colonial timber industry, plantation farming practices, and climate change. This interdisciplinary and intersectional project is informed by environmental histories including indigenous and maroon communities’ land management, geography, hydrology, and maritime traditions, including mapping and way-finding.