Nature’s Wild Children is a special edition print created on the occasion of Shelley Niro’s 2023 solo-exhibition of the same name. The photographed landscape of this diptych image couples two perspectives of a scene from the natural environment of Niro’s ancestral territory of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). At first glance, the images appear to be of a singular field of distance, yet upon closer viewing, the upper and lower images reveal differing focal lengths of the featured botanical subject endemic to the region.
Speaking to the significance of the image’s subject, Niro comments:
This diptych has two photos which were taken in 1997. They were taken outside of Albany New York, the traditional land of the Iroquois/Haudenosaunee/Ogwahoowee.
The top photograph is of corn. A singular shot of a cornstalk as it sways in the summer breeze. It looks majestic and free. The shot underneath is of wild flowers that surrounds it. The narrative of these images makes for easy storytelling. Corn is an important traditional food. Respectfully it is seen as life giving and has remained a cultural signifier.
Like much of my work I try to see potential images that will remind me and other community members of our history and imaginatively place a marker in our minds of our own diasporic journey to where we are now.
available framed: $6000
