Anthem, the latest installment of Doug Fogelson’s series Chemical Alterations uses chemically altered photographs of nature to comment on climate change and the destruction of the earth.

For the past few years, Chicago-based photographer Doug Fogelson has been making heavily saturated, almost-hallucinogenic images that respond to the peril of climate change. He photographs biologically diverse landscapes on analog film and subjects the negatives to industrial chemicals that make them morph, bleed and drip. The final prints retain varying degrees of the original nature scenes. In some, leafless trees battle the magenta and cyan-hued skies caused by Fogelson’s chemical burns. In others, abstraction takes over and no signs of the original scene remain. Fogelson asks viewers to do more than just marvel at technical tricks but to think carefully about their relationship to a quickly burning earth. While beautiful and inviting, they parallel the violence of human impact on the natural world and the Trump Administration’s erasure of policies that might help slow it down.

After his recent exhibition at Brooklyn, New York’s KlompChing Gallery, I spoke with Fogelson to learn more about his process and ideas.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Doug Fogelson