On Hills

In 2023, I was an artist in residence at Quinn Emanuel Artists in Residence in downtown Los Angeles. I started a new body of work, “On Hills,” while based out of my studio at QE. This was my first new project since starting Borrowed Landscape during the COVID-19 pandemic. After a couple of years photographing so close to home – my garden, neighbors, and friends – starting this new project helped me reestablish my practice of roaming the built environment of Southern California, both on foot and by car, in order to make work.

In “On Hills,” I use photography as a way to keep the uncollectible and to locate longing – fulfilled and unfulfilled – in the landscape. Looking at the landscape is a way to see what we have, what we want, and what we fear. With wonder (and sometimes incredulity), I look at the ways people – both individually and collectively – intervene in the landscape to force livability.

From upon hills, I can open the visual space of a photograph from ground to sky and peer into the homes, yards, and lives of others. I want to show vulnerability, tenderness, and absurdity in the built landscape of towns and cities, as well as the conflicts between the desire to cooperate with the landscape and the urge to dominate it. I am concerned with matters (and manners) of land use. What are our expectations about what outdoor space should look like or accomplish? Do we challenge the norms or perpetuate them? How do we use land, and does this (mis)use bring us together or keep us apart? I seek to offer answers to these questions with my work.

Recently, I had the opportunity to discuss this new body of work with Willem Verbeeck , a fantastic Los Angeles-based photographer with an insightful, unique presence on YouTube. Preparing for the video got me back in the darkroom to make analog color prints for the first time in over five years. It felt great to reconnect with the practice of making contact prints from my 8x10 negatives and to share the results during our interview.

Paloma Dooley is part of Issue 17 by Guest Editor Torbjørn Rødland

Check out her Artist Feature Borrowed Landscape.