Sticks of the Sun, Ashes of the Night, centers around the tenuous relationship between young people and the biosphere, alternately documented and authored by the photographic work of artists Rebecca Webb and Jesse Burke.
Burke’s images are derived from a series of road trips taken with his daughter—larks meant to impart his idea of an essential education; one that revolves around appreciation and respect for the vistas they encountered and gestures toward a worldview that encourages her to integrate the complexity of her own interconnectivity.
Webb’s ambivalence toward her adolescent son’s over-reliance on electronic media serves as the impetus to her interrogation into the ostensible dichotomies of technology and nature. Using the technology of the camera, Webb unearths a fabled narrative in which her son’s mediation between these margins opens a gateway to a different kind of intimacy with our tools, our environment, and each other.
Sticks of the Sun, Ashes of the Night asks the viewers to reconceptualize prior notions of what it means to commune with nature, directing focus to the vast, intricate networks of interconnectivity.