Monochrome Landscapes - Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics - page 96

EllsworthKelly, Four Panels ,1970-71. © ELLSWORTH KELLY AND GEMINI G.E.L., LOS ANGELES
longitude—attracted me as a sort of digital analog to the abstraction of the
monochrome.
Green in this exhibit marked a turning point, my first collaboration with an
NGO on an investigative project using satellite imagery. Working with Global For -
est Watch, an old-growth tropical rain forest in Yaounde, Cameroon, became the
focus of an intensive exploration of illegal logging.
It was the battlefield of that war that other, more obvious, war, in Iraq—then
in its second week—that was captured in the yellow image of the desert. For a cer -
tain time at the beginning of the fighting, the desert was overexposed to cameras
and publicity. Later, images became more difficult to obtain.
This work was extended into a new project. Shades of Green , first produced
for the group exhibition Antiphotojournalism at La Virreina Centre de la Imatge in
Barcelona. The show explored new relations between journalism and imagery,
and I chose to continue the project begun in Monochrome Landscapes with more
images of tropical forests, this time underlining the multiple shades of green in the
“same” forests.