In a Fog IV
C-Print

Nadim Sabella

Nadim Sabella interest in archeology and the environment inspired his current body of work. He creates photographs that transform familiar places into the strange and mysterious landscapes that comes to mind when he follows the climate change debate. The individual pieces are meditations on constant change, instability, and man’s inability to control the elements.

Sabella began exploring those ideas through his photography of architectural ruins throughout the American West. When Hurricane Katrina displaced thousands of human lives, he was inspired to explore those ideas through his first large scale installation, "A Room Displaced." The images of flooded homes that surfaced through the media left a lasting impression. They led Sabella to create his current series of photographs entitled "In a Fog," where he constructs and submerges miniature models of the San Francisco Bay Area in water. The title In a Fog, is a play on words. While as an idiom it refers to confusion and unawareness, it also serves as a direct reference to the infamous San Francisco fog that is present in every photograph.

In this body of work, Sabella combines model-making and photography to fabricate cinematic dreamscapes. Though the imagery is informed by real places and events, the work itself does not claim any scientific truth. What comes to surface in the murky waters is the reflection of our cultural downfall.