Once the Ocean Floor @ Haines Gallery

Haines Gallery is pleased to present Once the Ocean Floor, a group exhibition of photography featuring works by John Chiara, Linda Connor, David Maisel, and Meghann Riepenhoff. Working across a range of photographic processes, these artists foreground the natural world not simply as subject, but as an active force — an agent, collaborator, and historian.

Maisel’s Spiraling series offers an aerial perspective on the environmental crisis rapidly unfolding across the Great Salt Lake region. Through his lens, endangered landscapes are imbued with a disquieting allure.  Created directly within the landscape, Riepenhoff's State Shift cyanotypes underscore nature’s force as an agent of transformation, while inviting us to consider the personal and collective shifts needed to preserve our shared home.

Together, the artists in this exhibition propose a reorientation of photographic practice — one in which authorship is shared with and inspired by the natural world. Across these works, the earth is not merely represented, but an active participant. In this sense, photography becomes less a tool of depiction than a site of encounter, where the forces of nature, human intervention, and material processes converge.