Altered Horizons 36

Altered Horizons 36 Robin Botie of Ithaca, new York, photoshops fabricated landscapes as therapy for depression and entertainment for all the time spent at home alone.

Walking through a snow-dusted field on a windy night is what I was imagining. If you rotate this picture ninety degrees counterclockwise, maybe you can see the rump-end of a horse with its tail hanging down the left side. Turned around, the muddy and matted tail makes a dark blustery sky. On the bottom, under the horse’s groin, I added a small portion of the horse’s backside to make it look like there was another hill in the landscape.

For me, fabricating these landscapes in Photoshop is like creating tiny, fresh, nonpolitical, unpolluted worlds. It’s therapy for depression as well as entertainment for all the time spent home alone. And it’s a wish for a kinder world with less dissonance.

Altered Horizons 36

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Altered Horizons 35

Altered Horizons 35 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a landscape of steely sharp objects to illustrate that life can be hard.

It was not one of my better days. The sun was cruel and cold in a colorless sky on the morning a container of blueberries fell and burst all over the front seat of my car. I continued on with my errands, getting caught at every traffic light on the way downtown, picking up mashed berries each time I stopped for a red light. Finally at the county offices, I found a good parking spot but the pay station kept rejecting my credit card and I had no coins on me. So I dashed in to quickly to pick up the papers I needed. And, as I’d feared, my car was ticketed by the time I got back out.

Life can be harsh. Some days it’s difficult to leave the safety and comfort and predictability of home. My photography shoots don’t always end up in cozy lit studios, green valleys with pretty horses, or intriguing mountains of material wastes. At Cornell’s Hydroplant and Lake Source Cooling Plant there were ridged metal plates, grates and grinders, and all sorts of machinery with moving parts. Signs warned, “Keep Back,” and I did. And later, in Photoshop, I collaged several steely sharp-looking parts to create a hard merciless sun over a landscape of mashing metal.

Altered Horizons 35

 

 

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Altered Horizons 34

Altered Horizons 34 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, uses Photoshop to create a landscape of junk to illustrate the need for decluttering.

It’s Decluttering Time again: time to unload my home of accumulated stuff. The longer I live, the more I shop, and inherit, and acquire. It piles up quickly, unnoticeable at first as the newly cleared closets and shelves easily accommodate incoming treasure. Every third or fourth winter though, when the ice and cold keep me in the house for long stretches of time, I start noticing how the stuff starts dripping from every crammed corner. Some folks do an annual Spring Cleaning. But once I begin noticing this excessive acquisition of possessions, even in the harshest, most inconvenient and dismal season, I have to purge the place—pronto—before it can bury me.

At Upstate Shredding in Owego, NY, there were different landscapes everywhere I looked as mountains of sorted junk were being shredded, cleaned and sold to foundries and mills all around the world, to be reprocessed and made into new products. More stuff.

Altered Horizons 34

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Altered Horizons 32

Altered Horizons 32 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a fabricated landscape for all the people who are missing someone or something this holiday.

Holiday wishes: This year my heart goes out to the people who aren’t where they wish they could be, or who aren’t with the loved ones they yearn to be with. The people for whom someone or something is missing. I’m wishing you sweet comfort wherever and however you are. May the sad circumstances you find yourself in for the holidays yield a gentle unexpected peace.

At Cornell University’s Lake Source Cooling Plant, there were waves of rolled mesh supported by laths of wood and metal. I didn’t know what they did or were for but they quietly reflected the light, and I could imagine tiny creatures walking the smooth length of them. But where was the water, I wondered? And how would all this cool it? Cornell’s water and the lake water never mix. In Photoshop, for a black sun over the mesh-screened landscape, I imported the image of a nearby completely dry flanged pipe that conducted who-knows-which water who-knows-where. The lake seemed impossibly far away.

 

 

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Altered Horizons 31

Altered Horizons 31 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops landscape of loss and devastation as in the recent tornadoes, in dealing with depression and coping with loss.

There was a blue tarp behind the glittering mound of metal scraps at Upstate Shredding in Owego—a perfect sky for a jeweled mountain. The only thing needed to complete my fabricated landscape was a sun or a moon. In Photoshop, I cut-and-pasted the image of a silvery ring I’d found lying in the muddy ground between the piles of scrap.

Now, looking over my photos of scrapyard rubble, what I see is ruin, like the aftermath of the recent tornadoes. What were once my mountains of treasure are now landscapes of loss and devastation. As I sort through my photos, on the news I see people picking through piles of debris. And with the holidays coming up, I’m thinking of those who lost homes and all their treasures. Who lost loved ones. And I’m wishing them peace and comfort. And plenty more treasure to fill up their emptiness in the days to come.

 

 

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