O Pioneer: Feral Fables From Areca Roe

Areca Roe’s O Pioneer series, consisting of large-scale photographs of miniature landscapes, references the work of landscape photographers of the 1800s in a tongue-in-cheek manner. These photographers surveyed the West in North America and brought back stunning imagery of splendor and bounty, but also helped propel the destructive  narrative of Manifest Destiny. The miniature fur-lined landscapes in Areca’s photos are in some ways as otherworldly and foreign as those brought back by the surveying photographers—images of strange rock formations, geysers, pristine waterfalls, and wide open plains—with the fake fur referencing the lure of potential bounty as well as the resulting devastation.

 Forest

Lagoon


 
Coal Mine

 Passenger Pigeons

 Canyon

 

Water Stations

Yellowstone

 

Savanna