Photographs by Marion Belanger
Tectonic plates slide along the mantle of our earth, underneath our oceans, our land, our home. Tectonic plate edges are geologically active – they spread, move, erupt, and tremble. Their behavior is for the most part unpredictable, and wholly uncontainable. And while boundaries upon the land are often contested, politicized, and fought over, tectonic plate edges remain immune to any human efforts of control.
-Marion Belanger
In Rift/Fault, Marion Belanger photographs the traces of these plate edges on the land, examining both the built and natural environment, and this allows, as she writes in her project statement “for dialogue between the wild and the contained, the fertile and the barren, the geologic and the human.”
The photographs labelled Rift refers to the Mid-Atlantic Rift in Iceland, whereas Fault concentrates on the San Andreas Fault most known for earthquakes in California. In viewing Belanger’s photographs, we are drawn to consider the deep and sometimes violent history of the earth beneath us.
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Marion Belanger photographs the cultural landscape, particularly where geology and the built environment intersect. She was awarded a Guggenheim to photograph the contested landscape of the Everglades, focusing both upon the wetlands in the protected National Park, and the now drained swampland of the historic Everglades. Belanger earned a M.F.A from the Yale University School of Art, and a B.F.A. from the College of Art & Design at Alfred University.
