The Gorges //

Ithaca, New York //

As someone interested in the dynamics people create with their natural environments and our notions of space and boundaries, The Gorges is a project that has allowed me to study those elements within the area I grew up. How we interact with the outdoors is informed by a myriad of factors, some of them geographically influenced and all of them socially constructed. Even within the contiguous U.S., our collective comfort with wilderness - our sense of vulnerability or security within it and our inclination toward or away from controlling it - varies immensely. In the mountain west, where I lived for a number of years, space is ample and humans are not necessarily at the top of the food chain. Access to public lands is common and widely utilized, almost impossibly-so to a transplant from the east coast, where we’ve populated and physically fragmented nearly every mile of land.

The unique geography in and around Ithaca, New York experiences an exception to the rigidity of human-environment interaction that dictates so much of East Coast culture. It’s a playful haven, where hillsides roll gently above glacial gouges in the terrain that are the Finger Lakes. Steep, sloped granite walls and dozens of rivers drop dramatically into the flats, further carving out the gorges the area is famous for and leaving an abundance of waterfalls and swimming holes.

But it’s people’s connection with that environment that inform this project. A physical intimacy exists that is uniquely tolerated by municipalities, and human exchanges with the geography are trusting, exploratory and daring. It reflects a relationship that is increasingly rare in a culture of fences, liability fears and “No Trespassing” signs.