Jamey Stillings

CHANGING PERSPECTIVES As an artist, with aerial photography as a principal component of my work, I explore perspectives distinct from those found on earth's surface, revealing information and insight otherwise concealed. For the past five years, the focus of my work has been documenting utility-scale renewable energy development in the American Southwest. Beginning in 2010, with a flight over the future site of Ivanpah Solar in the Mojave Desert, The Evolution of Ivanpah Solar became a four-year look at what is now one of the world's largest concentrated solar power plants. Since its first publication in The New York Times Magazine, the work has been published and exhibited around the world. This summer, work is exhibited at Fotografie Forum Frankfurt and Mount Rokko International Photo Festival in Kobe. In 2015, Steidl published The Evolution of Ivanpah Solar, with a foreword by Robert Redford, an introduction by Anne Wilkes Tucker, and an essay by Bruce Barcott. For this year's Critical Mass, I am presenting a series from Crescent Dunes Solar near Tonopah, Nevada. During aerial photography last October, abstract forms within sections of the project’s 10,000 heliostats each with 35-mirrored facets entranced me. Crescent Dunes is a 110MW concentrated solar plant with molten salt storage that allows it to generate electricity through the night. The issues surrounding energy production are global in nature. My goal for the next five years is to build Changing Perspectives into a project of global scale. New renewable energy capacity is being built around the world at a remarkable pace. Projects in many countries reflect a growing international commitment to transform our cultures and economies away from dependence on fossil fuels to a future that taps the extraordinary and sustainable energy of the sun, wind, and tides. Over the next few years, I will document a select group of these projects, ones that reflect a proactive commitment to future generations.