Caroline de Mauriac: Beyond the Anthropocene

Beyond The Anthropocene: In Three Parts

The Anthropocene is a geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth until now. It affects Earth’s geology, landscape, limnology, ecosystems, and climate. The effects of human activities on Earth can be seen, for example, in depletion of natural resources, biodiversity loss, climate change, and alterations of the landscape. This work draws on the tenuous relationship between the human and the other-than-human world. It inhabits both my photographic and assemblage practices.

PART I

What kind of ancestor do you want to be?

—John Hausdoerffer

Much of my “soul feeding time” comes when I am out in nature fully experiencing its cyclical presence through the seasons. When photographing places impacted by humans, I frequently select architectural wonders of human endeavors. Having anthropological training, my interests often find me in places of archeological, historical, and cultural significance.

Landscapes in and around human communities are sprinkled with nearly indelible marks of a manmade environment. They are synthetic, inorganic constructions the Earth never intended or required, except through the technological visions, machinations, and desires of the planet’s human inhabitants. Images in the original project, from small cities and rural towns in Maine, from Cape Elizabeth to Brunswick and inland to Lewiston/Auburn, focus on spaces that are not usually highlighted as iconic Maine landscapes. Infrastructure of modern western civilization necessities have become regular features in the landscape with more accumulating every day.

I started compulsively experiencing them for their uncomfortable permanence in contrast to the cyclical nature of organic landscapes. They are insidious, surrounding us even when we barely give them a second look. Eventually, we no longer have use for them. We look the other way while they live out existence as pernicious blights on the Earth, gradually leeching their toxins and inorganic residues into the land, air, and water. Their cycle of dissolution far exceeds what will likely be the planetary reign of humans. As markers of our global presence, their stories will continue long after we have abandoned them, far beyond the Anthropocene.

Watch Tower

Cape Elizabeth: Built in 1942, the structure was part of a World War II harbor defense system. It was never fully operational, and today is sealed and slowly deteriorating.

Tunnel Vision

Brunswick: A view through the internal structure of the new bridge during the replacement of the Frank J. Wood Bridge across the Androscoggin River. Through the portal, additional construction materials and debris were visible. Once the new bridge became functional in 2026, work began on dismantling the original three-span truss structure that had served since 1932, just short of a century. It is unclear how much of it will remain in place and where discarded debris will be deposited.

Dump No Waste—Made in the USA

Lewiston: This street grate warning serves as a reminder of the predictable behavior of those disconnected from the value of Earth’s vital resources. It serves as an attempt to minimize human contamination of life’s essential element, water.

Foot and Fin

Portland: Fishing shacks line the Portland Waterfront Historic District’s Widgery Wharf. This particular shack, bold with color and amorphous shapes, stark in its accoutrements and its immediate environs, has a strange feeling of an intersection between modern surrealism and a dystopian future. It contemplates the impact of modern human food procurement and the health of ocean fisheries and habitats.

PART II 

Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.

—Robin Wall Kimmerer

“Beyond the Anthropocene” appears in my assemblage pieces as expressions of the lived experience of the other-than-human entities that share the planet. This work focuses on Earth’s ancient geologic time and organic history against the current challenges shared by all earthlings: animals, plants, and the necessary elements of life. Survival depends on sustainable use of limited resources, nurturing resilient relationships, and maintaining ecological balance. Whether acknowledged or not, the impacts of human activities on plant and animal life will have a lasting effect. These three-dimensional vignettes are snapshots that communicate the effects of political, economic, social, and environmental realities. What will be the long-term result of a negligent dominant culture over the ineffable value of unquantifiable beauty, organic balance, and planetary life support?

Once Upon a Goldilocks Planet

A reference to both the familiar children’s story and the unlikely perfection of the planet’s location in the universe that makes life here possible. Make no mistake, the bears know something has changed their home to one less recognizable and less habitable.

Time’s Up for George

George was the last of his subspecies of Galápagos tortoises. He passed away a number of years ago. Every year more animals and plants enter various levels of survival risk: near threatened, vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered, extinct in the wild, and extinct. They and we may ultimately face the same fate as George.

Transformation

These haunting amorphous mummified animal remains offer a reminder of the impermanence of all things. How much and what manner of influence humans choose to engage in will affect nearly all future planetary transformations.

Grail Quest

What will be possible in tackling the coming challenges? Can there be a successful collaboration of human technology, ancient wisdom, and the sustaining essence of nature’s cycles?

PART III

Nature is mythical and mystical always.

—Henry David Thoreau

The most recent cycle of the work is a project that integrates my photography and assemblage practices in a newly evolving series, Assemblage in the Wild. Created in natural landscapes, each assemblage installation is captured photographically then subsequently removed, leaving no trace. Overall, the project leans into explorations of the ecological and spiritual relationships between the human and other-than-human worlds.

Stories both enrich and define human experience. Nuanced stories of the living world and traditions that honor nonmaterial realities are frequently dismissed or forgotten in the modern dynamics of Western civilization. The visual narrative goal of Assemblage in the Wild is to create new and reinterpret old stories that evoke connections between the land we inhabit with our individual and collective human experiences. What can we learn from the land about a shared planetary future, if we look and listen closely to its stories while connecting our eyes and ears to our hearts?

Self-Portrait—Vasilisa the Wise

Meet Vasilisa, from the tale of her encounter with Baba Yaga, a powerful earth goddess with an unpredictable temperament. The experience enhances Vasilisa’s understanding of the power of listening to stories from the unfiltered voices of nature.

Under Pressure

A simple combination of a gauge mounted on cracking tree bark suggests the urgency and potentially explosive consequences of Earth’s natural systems being exploited to their breaking points.

Barnacles or Bones

A conversation between the land and the mythic imagination suggests complex interwoven realities and a need to make wise collective conscious choices.

Invitation to Awakening

In the oldest earth-based mythologies serpent energy is, with the sloughing off of its skin, the cyclical energy of life-death-life. The serpent’s fruit offering from the tree of knowledge invites awakening to transcendent wisdom and understanding of life’s ecological balance and the timeless, eternal interrelationship spiraling among all things.