Jonna McKone

Slow Drift is a lyrical series of photographs that explores concepts of home, land, boundaries, and afterlives. Former tobacco plantations in Maryland provided the starting point as I photograph a string of towns connected to this history. The work documents reverberations of this extractive history on communities, topsoil, waterways, ownership, and development. The chemigrams were produced by exposing light-sensitive paper to photo chemicals and different materials gathered onsite. All of the work considers the physicality of place, the subtleties of light and the ways that history imprints on locations, which in turn shapes our present. This body of work has become my means to explore family and collective histories as well as a changing climate.

This work is supported through a VisArts Studio Fellowship, the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, The Maryland State Arts Council and Maryland Institute College of Art’s Adjunct Faculty Grant.