The Last Path to the Forest
In the spring of 2023, Dekalb County, Georgia closed the public park where activists had been struggling for two years to prevent the conversion of public land into a privately funded police training center and movie soundstage complex. By then, the police had killed one activist and arrested over forty others under the spurious charge of domestic terrorism for camping in the park. The executive order shuttering the public park was the final act of enclosure.
That summer, I installed photographs made during the activist occupation along the path that brought people as close to it as then legally allowed. The barricaded tunnel had become a new gathering spot, where activists revived their spirits and recommitted themselves to defending the forest.
"The Last Path to the Forest" is part of an ongoing exploration of photography as a social practice and an experiment in integrating form, content, and context. I printed the photographs on weatherproof banner material and, with help from a friend, hung them from the trees using knots I'd learned as a forest defender. I had originally planned to install a series of photographs inside the park, in the heart of the forest camp, where hand-painted banners displaying various slogans had hung at different times. The police raids foreclosed that possibility.