Listening to the Land is a visual exploration of the Blue Ridge Bartram Trail that features the photography of thirty-two artists. The photographs featured in this resonant and varied exhibition celebrate the region's rich biodiversity while honoring each person’s unique relationship with the land.

This dynamic exhibition reflects the visual experiences of twelve artists as they traveled in Bartram’s footsteps. Each artist worked in the spirit of curiosity, exploration, and wonder while reimagining this well-traveled landscape. Featuring images from coastal Georgia to North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, With Rapture & Astonishment invites viewers to enter an intimate world where Bartram’s trail is alive and waiting to be met and listened to anew.

This collection of photographs were made by students at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina and selected by Anna Helgeson and Susan Martin. Over the course of the Spring 2023 semester students interacted with Kinship in multiple ways including workshops, lectures, and photo responses to recorded gatherings. The end result is a diverse collection reflecting the multitude of ways that one can approach our relationships to each other and the natural world.

The photographers featured in this online gallery were participants in a six-week online contemplative photography class offered through The Rowe Center. Using whatever cameras they had available, photographers of all levels were invited to enter an intimate world where the landscape was alive and waiting to be met, understood, and listened to. The resulting photographs are full of subtle grace, beauty, tenderness, and co-creative vulnerability.

The eleven photographers featured in this exhibition reflected upon the same five-mile section of the Bartram National Recreation Trail for twelve weeks between Osage Overlook and Jones Gap near Highlands, NC. Many of the photographers featured here drew inspiration and guidance from William Bartram and the place-based traditions of diverse indigenous peoples, including The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, who have stewarded this land for millennia and who freely shared their wisdom with William Bartram.