Donna Bassin: Portraits of the Precarious Earth

Based on the series, Environmental Melancholia, Donna Bassin’s photo-based landscapes respond to the environmental crisis and its psychological impact. These striking images reveal Earth’s vulnerability and the profound losses of land, animal, and plant life.

At first glance, Bassin’s photographs draw inspiration from the rich histories of landscape painting, appearing idyllic. However, a closer examination disrupts this serene facade, unsettling perceptions of a natural world that remains unchanged. Each piece visually transforms traditional topographies, prompting viewers to question their understanding of what they see.

The constructed landscapes consist of two layered images from different locations, physically combined to create connections through color relationships or compositional elements. These images are affixed using photo corners, Japanese Washi mending tape, or embroidery thread, while each site’s longitude and latitude are noted, erasing geopolitical borders and creating a global narrative. This approach underscores our collective responsibility for the Earth.

In some works, photo corners evoke past practices, hinting at a hypothetical future where remnants of our natural world exist only as distant memories—reminiscent of nostalgic postcards from a vanishing past. In others, as our planet faces devastation, natural resources are torn from one scene and transferred to a depleted landscape, enacting a reparative process of injury and restoration.

In conjunction with her exhibition, Bassin will curate selections from the Newport Art Museum’s permanent collection of 19th-century landscape paintings, featuring notable works by George Inness and William Trost Richards, inviting reflection on 19th-century landscape painters as early environmentalists. Their work and reception have been both celebrated and critiqued for reflecting a growing awareness of nature’s beauty, and the tension between its resilience and fragility.

About the Artist
Donna Bassin is a photo-based artist, filmmaker, clinical psychologist, educator, and published author. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, she now resides in New Jersey. Her long-term projects engage with harmful aspects of contemporary life, including post-traumatic stress, racism, social injustice, and the destruction of our environment. Bassin has received a 2024 Puffin Foundation Artist Grant and a 2021 New Jersey Council on the Arts Fellowship for photography. She was a finalist in Critical Mass 2023 and recognized as one of the Top 50 Photographers for Critical Mass 2022.