Emily Myerscough is an interdisciplinary artist combining documentary photography, scientific methodologies, and a conceptually-based practice to explore the visual limits of objective reporting. She received a BA in Political Science from New College of Florida and is currently completing an MFA in Photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her work has been supported by grants from the Nellie Mae Foundation and the Society for Photographic Education, and has been exhibited in New York and the Southeast. Today we feature her series, The Mountain is Something More than a Vast Green Expanse.
Flora autóctona del campo volcánico (Native flora of the volcanic field), 13,14 (2013)
Los dos cerros de Ometepe (The twin peaks of Ometepe), 2013
![El dueño fuí de mi jardín de sueño / lleno de rosas y de cisnes vagos (Lord was I of my garden-place of dreams / of heaping roses and swan-haunted brakes) [Rubén Darío, 1905], 2013](http://s3.amazonaws.com/images.aint-bad.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/25181210/emily_myerscough_02_o.jpg)
El dueño fuí de mi jardín de sueño / lleno de rosas y de cisnes vagos (Lord was I of my garden-place of dreams / of heaping roses and swan-haunted brakes) [Rubén Darío, 1905], 2013
The Masaya Caldera in southwestern Nicaragua is one of the most active calderas in the world. While still in its formative years, Spanish conquistador Francisco Bobadilla climbed to the top and christened it La Boca del Infierno [The Mouth of Hell], leaving behind a small wooden cross to exorcise the surrounding landscape. Four centuries later, the site was re-christened Nicaragua’s first National Park by (then) dictator Anastasio Somoza, on the eve of the decade-long Contra War.
The Mountain is Something More than a Vast Green Expanse is an on-going effort to trace the contours of the geological and social history of the Masaya Caldera, making visible the points of intersection between science, politics, and aesthetics within the land. Like the crater itself, significant facts tend to shift and erode, covered up by new layers and stories – which will themselves, in time, disappear.
Patio, Cárcel XXI (Courtyard of Cárcel XXI, Somoza-era prison), 2013
Fauna autóctona del campo volcánico (Native fauna of the volcanic field), 2013
Retrato de Augusto Sandino, proyectil Howitzer, imagenes de la Revolución (Portrait of Augusto Sandino, Howitzer shell, images of the Sandinista Revolution), 2013
Flora autóctona del campo volcánico (Native flora of the volcanic field), 1,2 (2013)
Almohada, propiedad del estado (Government-issued pillow), 2013
Boca del infierno (Mouth of Hell), 2013
San Arcángel Miguel (Saint Michael the Archangel), 2013
Flora autóctona del campo volcánico (Native flora of the volcanic field), 7,8 (2013)
Cruz de Francisco Bobadilla (Cross of Francisco Bobadilla), 2013
Isla de Ometepe (Island of Ometepe), 2013
To view more of Emily’s work please visit her website.