Kevin Schley Photography

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Structuring Nature 2025

As I photographed over the last few years, I became drawn not only to man’s encroachment into natural spaces but our need to control nature. Through photography, I explore the complex relationships we humans have with the natural world; a sense of its primal wildness runs through our own spiritual passions and desires, yet we deny this connection through expressions of dominance and attempts to transform nature to serve our more basic utilitarian needs. The natural world in its purity is wild and, left unchecked, nature will take over. Emotionally, we may be drawn to it, but the wildness of nature fills no utilitarian purposes and may even thwart our ambitions. To reconcile this tension, we seek to control nature, to have it conform to our sense of practical order. This is evident in the contrasting appearances of the natural world and our constructed environments. Our houses provide shelter and protect us from the natural environment; they keep us warm in the winter, cool in the summer heat, and dry when the rain comes. Yet, we surround ourselves with a controlled version of nature: houseplants inside our homes, neatly manicured lawns, heavily designed gardens and parks, and trees planted in orderly rows. Powerlines run through our cities and across the landscape. They are so common that we hardly notice that they are blocking our view of the natural world around us. There are three portfolio series of “Structuring Nature” here on my website that show the evolution of the project.

Structuring Nature 2024

Structuring Nature 2024

Garbage Can Tourists

I was photographing in Goblin Valley, Utah. There were people wandering around doing normal tourist stuff, enjoying the sights, taking photos, and selfies at the overlooks. As I was watching them, I noticed garbage cans placed around the overlook. They looked as if they were standing around waiting and posing for their photo to be taken. I thought it was funny how they seemed to take on a life of their own, so I started to photograph them. This first set of pictures led me to start to look for trash cans to photograph. I thought of them as garbage can tourists, out on vacation. Whenever I found a trash can that was in an interesting location, I would photograph them. As the photography evolved, I began to find other garbage cans and instead of just photographing garbage can tourists, I started to photograph everyday garbage cans, the working-class garbage cans, the garbage can alone by the road, groups together. It interested me that I was assigning an emotional value to garbage cans based on their location, condition, and state of being. The personalities of the garbage cans mirror and explore the personalities and attitudes of their human masters.

Sculpture of Existence

I have photographed trees for many years, considering life behind existence. Some seeds fall to the ground. One gets enough nourishment to sprout and begin to grow. It spends its strength pushing its roots into the ground and reaching its branches to the sky to become a tree. Year after year, this continues, the struggle for life, roots into the ground, branches to the sky. Life, diving deeper into the ground and reaching for the sky. The process of building and making over time, life to death. After many years, the tree dies and leaves behind for us the sculpture it spent its existence creating. What is the sculpture of my existence?

Pinhole Photographs

Photographs made using hand constructed pinhole lenses