This is a picture of a place that’s close to where I live — a grain field that’s been cleared, by burning, near the Sacramento River. The photographer’s vantage point makes it abstract, and the fact that it was cleared by burning makes it a companion to all our current tales of environmental destruction — from brush fires in Southern California to rainforest destruction in the Amazon. The picture is well-executed, of course, but it has greater meaning: it’s kind of a Rorschach of our relationship to agriculture and ecology. Copyright Emmet Gowin

This is a picture of a place that’s close to where I live — a grain field that’s been cleared, by burning, near the Sacramento River. The photographer’s vantage point makes it abstract, and the fact that it was cleared by burning makes it a companion to all our current tales of environmental destruction — from brush fires in Southern California to rainforest destruction in the Amazon. The picture is well-executed, of course, but it has greater meaning: it’s kind of a Rorschach of our relationship to agriculture and ecology.

Copyright Emmet Gowin