Tag Archives: grief and loss

Altered Horizons 84

Altered Horizons 84 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes in dealing with depression and coping with loss.

Whether it’s a home I’m constructing or a mountain of mashed potatoes, building is about solving problems, getting around obstacles, making something that is more than just the materials being manipulated. It’s more than just quelling the yearnings that drive me to create things. For me, building is about hope and dreams. Piecing together some semblance of peace. And future.

I wish you all of these things: Hope. The realization of your dreams. Peace. And a bright future. Happy New Year. Happy 2023.

While photographing scattered debris on the concrete floor of a construction site, I came across this neat bundle of nails. In Photoshop I turned it into a heavenly body above the littered concrete to make this week’s fabricated landscape.

 

Altered Horizons 84

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Altered Horizons 81

Altered Horizons 81 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes in her efforts to deal with depression and loss.

It must have been one of my rough days, the day I photographed this huge pile of discarded building materials and then turned the image upside down in Photoshop. “The sky is falling, the sky is falling,” is what I imagined at the time. Later, I added a photo of a chipped rock ledge for the “sky” to land onto. And, to contain the chaos, I framed the scene with rebar, rods used to reinforce concrete. Unfortunately, now when I regard this fabricated landscape, I’m reminded of media images of floods and rivers swollen with debris, carrying off people’s homes and belongings. Creating these fake landscapes is not always an uplifting endeavor. But I get to control the devastation and disturbance in this one small scene.

 

Altered Horizons 81

 

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Altered Horizons 80

Altered Horizons 80 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes in dealing with her depression and coping with change.

I hate saying goodbye. Saying, “See you again soon” feels much easier, even if I know I won’t be back—or see whoever or whatever— ever again. So when I leave, I go quietly, often without saying anything, and without leaving a trace. Sometimes my exit is all about escaping, and sometimes I’m simply moving on to some other adventure. No looking back. No regrets, usually. Just off, alone, into the sunset.

This juxtaposition of rocks at the Finger Lakes Stone Company reminded me of that. At the quarry there were slabs of stone and huge hunks of concrete wherever I looked, and I photographed dozens of lonely landscapes. The only thing I did in Photoshop for this fabricated landscape was piece together a frame from the lengths of concrete-strengthening rebar that I found laying about.

 

Altered Horizons 80

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Altered Horizons 79

Altered Horizons 79 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes in her efforts to deal with depression and cope with seasonal affective disorder.

Long ago my mother used to scold me, “Don’t play with your food.” But I’d keep making hills and valleys in my mashed potatoes anyway. So I guess building fake landscapes is part of my history. And this time of the year, when there’s so much going on, escaping into play-mode is one way I cope with Seasonal Affective Disorder.

At Grisamore Farms in Locke, NY, there were bins of every kind of squash. Smooth, marled, rough and knobbly. A pebbly squash lay against a mottled one, reminding me of a fertile field under a cloudy sky.

 

Altered Horizons 79

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Altered Horizons 78

Altered Horizons 78 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes in dealing with her depression.

There was rock all over the place at Finger Lakes Stone. Boulders. Slabs of sliced rock. Piles of stones of all sizes. Maybe it’s a gift—I don’t know— to be able to go to a rock quarry and imagine mountains from stacked pieces of rock, to see things as much bigger and grander than they are. Then, the challenge is to convince others that the mountains in your mind are real. In Photoshop, I maneuvered my images of rocks to make a fabricated landscape with a rocky frame. I added hazy white scattering between layers of rocks to make the sky and horizon more believable.

 

Altered Horizons 78

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Altered Horizons 77

Altered Horizons 77 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes in dealing with depression and coping with loss.

My kids used to accuse me of not knowing how to play, not being silly enough. And it’s true. Silliness never came naturally to me. But now, photo-shopping allows me to stretch the truth and lie. To make things up. To play. Even when I’m depressed.

The bellies were plump and sagging on all the animals at the farm where I was doing a class photo-shoot. Back home, by the time I dropped my images into Photoshop, I couldn’t remember exactly whose belly I’d shot, a sheep’s or a goat’s or a horse’s. No matter. For my fabricated landscape of the week, I was turning whoever’s hairy belly it was into a heavenly body. I placed it over the upended, very somber trunk of a tree that, in my mind, resembled a flowing river. This is about as silly as I get.

 

Altered Horizons 77

 

 

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