I don’t remember where I first saw these crumpled landscape photos by Detroit-based artist Millee Tibbs, but I’ve been holding on to the images for a while. Although I’m not often a fan of straightforward landscapes, I’m drawn to abstracted landscapes. Or, in this case, folded landscapes.
Tibbs is interested in the relationship between surfaces and what lies beneath them, along with the space where its qualities contradict each other while simultaneously coexisting. This series is called Mountains + Valleys after the two primary folds in origami.
After photographing the landscapes, Tibbs prints, folds, then re-photographs them, resulting in images that are both manipulated and photographically real.
In her statement Tibbs says that images of the American West are used to interpret and confront cultural myths that are disseminated through the representation of that landscape. And that the work uses physical alteration to create relationships between formal geometries and natural spaces that question the illusionistic representation of the photographic image.
Here are eight of Millee Tibbs’ folded, abstracted landscapes.
