Statement:
My work explores the interconnectedness of existence and the lessons we can learn from nature. Embracing impermanence and mortality, navigating ambiguity, recognizing that shadows contain future possibilities, and finding light in dark times have always been important themes. I am drawn to the balancing effects I experience during my moving meditations through the natural world and how connecting with nature puts our fleeting time on Earth in perspective in terms of the natural order and deep time. In April 2025, I was fortunate to visit Japan for three weeks, where I visited many Buddhist temples and Shinto Shrines as well as carefully tended gardens and wild areas. I was deeply affected by the reverence Japanese people show for all beings and their recognition that spirit exists in every manifestation of matter, even rocks. I was deeply touched by how they support ancient limbs with tree crutches, venerating these ancient sentinels and helping the trees live into the present and future. My father was a philosopher whose life’s work focused on the Janus Paradox. Consequently, I was raised to understand the importance of simultaneously looking to the past and to the future when determining what to value and how to act in the present–which is but a fleeting threshold between these two states. Although I make both black and white and color prints, my preferred medium is platinum-palladium to underscore the preciousness of life and to offer a record of my encounters with landscapes that will outlive me. My work is a sacred remembrance and an homage to that which is ephemeral and that which has endured through generations.
The digital negative for my platinum-palladium print Ancient Black Pine Canopy, Ritsurin Garden was made during my trip. There are over 400 black pines in this garden that was established in the 17th century, many of which have been pruned and shaped for over 300 years. Looking up into the canopy felt like peering into an infinite cosmos where time is unending and overlapping instead of linear. It was as if I had encountered a place where multiple stages of being were inseparable and I couldn’t help but wonder how much these trees have witnessed and how much longer they will remain standing.
Bio:
The work of poetic climate artist, Lynne Buchanan, focuses on the importance and threats that face waterways and forests around the world. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans and The Bishop Museum in Florida, and it has been featured in The New York Times. Buchanan’s photographs have been exhibited in over 60 solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries across the United States and in Europe. Her latest book of photographs and haikus, The Poetry of Being, was published by Daylight Books in May 2023 and received silver awards in the Budapest and Tokyo International Foto Awards. She is also the author and photographer of Florida’s Changing Waters: A Beautiful World in Peril, published by George F. Thompson Publishing. Public speaking includes talks given at the Miami Book Fair, as well as at the Society for Environmental Journalism and the North American Nature Photography Association’s Summit. Buchanan has also contributed articles for Waterkeeper Magazine and her work has been featured in numerous publications including features in Black + White Photography, Photobook Journal, Artdoc Photography Magazine, Shots Magazine, South X Southeast Photomagazine, and Lenscratch, among others. She is the recipient of masters degrees in art history/museum studies from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and in creative writing from the University of South Florida in Tampa. She also received a bachelor’s degree in art history from New College in Sarasota, Florida. Buchanan currently works and resides in Fletcher, NC.
