Of Timber and Titanium

This photographic project currently under development examines the cultural and environmental intersections of natural resource industries in Georgia’s lower coastal plains, focusing on how land use along the Altamaha River shapes the health of coastal ecosystems. Moving between timber farming, heavy mineral mining, agriculture, industrial processing, and fragile wetlands, the work traces the visible and often uneasy relationships between extraction, labor, and landscape.

The photographs do not function as a simple critique of industry. Instead, they acknowledge the long history of natural resource use as a foundation of regional development and everyday life, while holding that history in tension with the ecological consequences that continue to unfold. By juxtaposing industrial sites with forests, rivers, marshes, and working landscapes, the work invites a more nuanced consideration of how conservation and development coexist—not as opposing forces, but as interdependent and contested systems.

Through careful observation and relational sequencing, the images ask viewers to consider their own position within these systems: how materials, economies, and environments are connected, and how individual choices participate in broader ecological narratives. The project seeks to foster environmental literacy not through didactic explanation, but through visual complexity—creating space for reflection, dialogue, and a deeper awareness of the fragile balance sustaining coastal communities and ecosystems.