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As I write this from the charred city of Los Angeles, Donna Bassin’s powerful project speaks to climate change and altered landscapes. Aptly titled Environmental Melancholia,  Bassin intervenes with thread and mending tape, merging disparate vistas into new realities. The series will be shown in its entirety as part of an upcoming solo exhibition, Donna Bassin: Portraits of the Precarious Earth, from January 29, 2025, until May 5, 2025, at the Newport Art Museum, Newport, Rhode Island.

The museum shares this statement:

At first glance, Bassin’s photographs draw inspiration from the rich histories of landscape painting, appearing idyllic. However, a closer examination disrupts this serene facade, unsettling perceptions of a natural world that remains unchanged. Each piece visually transforms traditional topographies, prompting viewers to question their understanding of what they see.

The constructed landscapes consist of two layered images from different locations, physically combined to create connections through color relationships or compositional elements. These images are affixed using photo corners, Japanese Washi mending tape, or embroidery thread, while each site’s longitude and latitude are noted, erasing geopolitical borders and creating a global narrative. This approach underscores our collective responsibility for the Earth.

In some works, photo corners evoke past practices, hinting at a hypothetical future where remnants of our natural world exist only as distant memories—reminiscent of nostalgic postcards from a vanishing past. In others, as our planet faces devastation, natural resources are torn from one scene and transferred to a depleted landscape, enacting a reparative process of injury and restoration.

In conjunction with her exhibition, Bassin will curate selections from the Newport Art Museum’s permanent collection of 19th-century landscape paintings, featuring notable works by George Inness and William Trost Richards, inviting reflection on 19th-century landscape painters as early environmentalists. Their work and reception have been both celebrated and critiqued for reflecting a growing awareness of nature’s beauty, and the tension between its resilience and fragility.

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Environmental Melancholia

Like much of the work, Environmental Melancholia explores the nuanced interplay among injury, damage, loss, grief, resilience, and repair rooted in personal and collective experiences. This series confronts the urgent complexities of the climate crisis and its profound effects on our environment, physical survival, and psychological well-being. As a clinical psychologist who specializes in traumatic loss, I have blended my insights from mental health with my passion for visual storytelling, creating 45 photo-based landscapes that reflect the deep losses we are enduring in terms of land, flora, and fauna as we witness the contemporary ecological challenges and the vulnerability of our planet. My work is deeply personal and rooted in my grief as I witness this environmental decline. I aim to create aesthetic experiences that engage and provoke thought; I invite viewers to face their existential fears, encouraging collective connection and reflection instead of denial or paralysis.

Visually, I draw inspiration from the captivating landscapes of 19th-century American painters of the Hudson River School, such as Thomas Cole and Frederick Edwin Church. Their visions of a fictive, unspoiled wilderness that melds reality and imagination often rely on composite scenes from various views and inspire my reinterpretations. While they celebrated the beauty of nature as an early call for environmental preservation amid the unchecked industrial age of Manifest Destiny, their work also reflects the shadow of history, erasing the Indigenous peoples and the exploitation of their land.

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Similarly, at first glance, many of my landscapes seem idyllic and recognizable; however, a closer look disrupts this façade, challenging assumptions about an unchanging natural world and our expectation that nature will persist unchanged. Each piece reshapes traditional topographies, prompting questions about what is happening in the landscapes in our current environments. To create my imagined landscapes, I layer two photographs – one printed on Moab Entrada Rag Natural and the other on Moab Moenkopi Unryu, sourcing each from my archives of distinct geographic locations to form a single, unified landscape. Each landscape features GPS coordinates from the original locations, intentionally omitting human-defined borders and nations’ names. I juxtapose visions: one depicting desolation – deforested mountains, melting glaciers, or parched coasts, with another that is vital, reflecting the beauty of what has been lost or what could be reclaimed through collective action. Through digital editing, I harmonize the two layers, aligning color, scale, or composition – a mountain’s curves connect to a river’s path – initiating a dialogue between hope and despair, healing and loss. I attach these layers using archival photo corners, Japanese washi tape, or embroidery thread, addicting a tactile dimension to the work.

In some works, the photo corners evoke nostalgia, hinting at a future where remnants of our natural world exist only as distant memories, reminiscent of postcards in a scrapbook of a vanishing past: a sentimental archiving of loss. In others, I grapple with the swift disappearance of our resources; fertile landscapes and wildlife are extracted from one photograph and transferred to another of a diminished, injured environment, tenuously held together with tape or stitching to embody a reparative process of healing and restoration.

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As an artist, I wrestle with the implications of categorizing my work as political. While I aim to address pressing issues, such labeling might constrain my work to a singular narrative and overlook its emotional, aesthetic, and conceptual layers. The complexity of social and environmental challenges often defies simplistic categorization, and I hope my series serves as a medium for nuanced exploration rather than a prescriptive call to action. I understand that political labels can alienate specific audiences, limiting the reach and resonance of my art. As I navigate these tensions, I remain committed to creating art that invites reflection and dialogue, transcending the binary definitions of art and politics.

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Donna Bassin is a photo-based artist, filmmaker, clinical psychologist, and published author. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, she now resides in New Jersey. Her long-term projects engage with painful aspects of contemporary life, including post-traumatic stress, racism, social injustice, and the destruction of our environment.

These efforts have led to two award-winning feature-length documentaries, museum and gallery exhibitions, and publications in numerous art and culture magazines—such as Tricycle, Fotonostrum, Grazia, Borderline Press’ Facsimile, Lens Magazine, FLOAT Magazine, LandEscape Art Review, Dodho Magazine, The Hand Magazine, Analog Forever, Vostok Magazine, and Overlapse’s Stir the Pot—as well as public installations, book covers, and a billboard. The Afterlife of Dolls, a solo exhibition at Montclair Art Museum, was featured on PBS’s State of the Arts. Her work is held in private and museum collections. Bassin has received a 2024 Puffin Foundation Artist Grant and a 2021 New Jersey Council on the Arts Fellowship for photography. She was recognized as one of the Top 50 Photographers for Critical Mass 2022 and a finalist in Critical Mass 2023 and 2024.

Selections from her current Environmental Melancholia series have been exhibited in New York City at the Carter Burden Gallery and Ceres Gallery

Instagram: @p1nhole.donnabassin

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