Photography

Nich McElroy’s Tranquil Imagery

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Words: Monika Mróz

With a background in philosophy and literature, Nich McElroy has become recognized for his thoughtful landscape photography. However, in his ongoing series ‘Float Copper’, while documenting the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan, the American photographer provides the new perspective on contemplating land.

“These texts, coupled with the landscape and geography of the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan set my mind in motion.”

Born during a residency on a small island in Lake Superior, the work was determined by the two passages. “A mobile person sees the landscape she passes through as stationary because she changes faster than it does, but the stationary person sees that everything around is changing,” – an outtake from Rebecca Solent’s ‘A Book of Migrations’ – comes first.

This, along with the grim prose of László Krasznahorkai’s ‘Satantango’, has been translated into the mood throughout McElroy’s imagery. Staying true to the principles of documentation, the photographer chooses its fragment to create a greater, visually coherent narrative. Serene and pensive, the series sets a feeling of something inevitable to happen at the same time. McElroy describes: “These texts, coupled with the landscape and geography of the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan set my mind in motion – and it’s kinda been in motion ever since.”