An Elemental Life - Tracy Warren
Flood
An Elemental Life
Tracy Warren
An Elemental Life is a year-long photographic practice that explores the body’s connection to air, fire, water, and earth.
The series of photographs began with the Air season. We can’t see air, but we feel it, smell it, and hear it. The exchange of breath is necessary for life. The Air series examines how the spaces within and around the body are affected by air and how the body impacts the air around it.
During the season of Fire, the method of controlled burning used to prepare fallowed land for long-term growth and renewal provided inspiration for the images. Land depleted of nutrients is burned to lay down a layer of ash, which helps to fertilize and regenerate the land in preparation for new growth. Through periods of rest, there is a clearing away the old and making room for the new. Sitting with the body’s inner fallowness led to the creative spark that ultimately called the body to movement.
The images created for the Water season followed the water cycle to trace the fluidity of experience, emotions, and sense of self that exemplifies the inner landscape. The James River serves as the backdrop for the metaphorical water-cycle: releasing grief; fusing fragmented experiences; grounding the body to place; and collecting memories. The Water images portray the multitude of ways that identity is shaped and shifts over time.
The project culminated with the Earth season. Humans tend to view themselves as independent of trees and have forgotten their connection to trees. Trees occupy a vastly different time-space than humans. Much of a tree’s life is invisible to humans because much of the tree’s life occurs underground, beneath their bark, and at the microscopic level. Their timelines are slower than humans. They sense time in centuries while humans measure time in years, hours, and minutes. The series of images made during the Earth season seeks to examine whether a human can develop a relationship with a tree by spending time with the tree over time.
Tracy Warren is a photographer based in Richmond, Virginia. She received a BA in Psychology with a minor in Fine Art from Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina. She took darkroom photography classes at Virginia Commonwealth University and the Visual Arts Center of Richmond while completing her graduate degrees. She continued her photographic education at Santa Fe Workshops in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has participated in several solo and group exhibitions in Knoxville, Tennessee and Richmond. Tracy has developed work since 2021 as a member of Kinship Photography Collective. She is currently shooting a series of work about the body’s relationship to the elements of air, fire, water, and earth.
