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Naomi White
About The Artist
Naomi White is an abolitionist feminist, artist, and educator, working on ideas at the intersection of political ecology and photography. Focusing on the transformative power of photography to affect desire and change, much of her work questions how we can shift our focus away from the current racist, capitalist model of domination to one of equity and collective voice, for the sake of all people, animals and the planet.
White is the winner of PDN’s Objects of Desire award, has attended several artist residencies, and exhibited throughout North America and Europe, including Scope, Art Basel Miami, and Photo LA.
Her work has been published in PDN, The Brooklyn Rail, FAYN, and Uncertain States. White holds an MFA in Photography and Related Media from SVA in New York, a Post Baccalaureate in Photography from the San Francisco Art institute, and a BA in English Literature from San Francisco State. She is currently the Chair of photography at the New York Film Academy in Burbank, California.
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Excavations, 2021
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"What we remember is just as revelatory as what we forget.
The effects of our species are literally written into rocks. Rocks act like black boxes, databases, cameras, recording our drive towards extinction at our own hand, through the pollutants we push into the sky.
This work addresses climate justice through buried histories, of racism, patriarchy and homophobia; parallel histories that have been written over for centuries, but which remain as truths set into stone. Through physical excavations into photographs of rocks, I tear, burn and open space to see glimpses of parallel pasts, with images sourced from dominant culture perspectives found in National Geographics, and resistance perspectives found online." - Naomi White
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Time Capsules from the Capitalocene 1 - Naomi White, 2019
Time Capsules from the Capitalocene, 2019
"This series examines the way petro-driven capitalism has harmed the earth, its people, its creatures, through found materials, such as animal bones and plastic waste, pollution and decay. Contemplating the end of a settler colonialism, we are left bare with a consumerist sublime of beauty and toxicity. Though filled with despair, these scenes also offer a playful critique of what once was, and a celebration of what can still be. Images as time capsules serve as surviving traces of our origins stories and contemporary concerns."
- Naomi White
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Time Capsules form the Capitalocene 2 - Naomi White, 2019
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Time Capsules form the Capitalocene 3 - Naomi White, 2019
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Time Capsules form the Capitalocene 5 - Naomi White, 2019
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Time Capsules form the Capitalocene 6 - Naomi White, 2019
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Time Capsules form the Capitalocene 7 - Naomi White, 2019
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Time Capsules form the Capitalocene 9 - Naomi White, 2019
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SHIPWRECKED, 2017
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"Using the wind as a metaphor for both uncertainty and hope, plastic packaging is set adrift, menacing travelers from the sky as they drive down the road. Wind turbines and electricity towers form familiar interruptions in the landscape, signs of modernity and convenience, edifices which entrap wayward debris.Distant and invisible forces have such profound affect on our lives and the lives of our children, individually and collectively. Human-driven climate change is causing rising sea levels and is driving us towards an unsustainable future. Will our children have the same opportunities as we do? What will the road look like for them?" - Naomi White
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Arguments With A Surface X - Naomi White, 2019
Arguments With A Surface, 2019
"Plastic packaging calls to us like a Siren, luring us to our death. Only 8% of plastic is recycled, and none of the single use plastic such as plastic bags, is recyclable. Scouring the street and my daily life for plastic, I photograph, scan and replicate, recycling the un-recyclable.
Each layer is assigned a different color cast to create a conversation between the perspectives, and to point to the struggle between convenience and extinction, blurring the line between representation and abstraction.
This work was born out of frustration with the recent climate change findings, and the knowledge that in 1977 we knew everything we know now, but we were unable to take action and stop global warming. Instead we waged war, and further polluted our oceans and waterways with oil and fracking. Deconstructing the image using iterative slashes through the layers, mimicking the geometric torn edges of the plastic, the photograph attacks itself, as a metaphor for our own repulsion and seduction by plastic, and our role in the climate crisis."
- Naomi White
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PLASTIC CURRENTS, 2012
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"A current is a continuous, directed movement of water generated by the forces acting upon it, such as the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon. Interaction with other currents transforms a current's direction and strength. In Plastic Currents, the every day plastic bag is transformed by light, turned from something familiar into something strange. Undulating and fluid these forms transition from non-biodegradable, reviled plastic bags into seemingly organic forms, imitating the very nature they threaten.
Through explorations of the material I am interested in the way plastic responds to touch, its surface, its weight, how it clings to lighter elements like lint and dirt through static electricity, and the way each bag is its own marvel. By isolating plastic bags, icons of waste and convenience, we are asked to consider our role in their affects, but also to question the transformative power of the photograph and its ability to reconcile a simple bag into something other worldly, full of possibilities." - Naomi White -
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