Puna
- Puna
“PUNA” is part of a decade long project on the effects of climate change – which Jasmine Rossi has been working on parallel to her oeuvre “ICE/H20”about the melting polar regions.Most of her work evolves around water (H20) - the element that sustains life - or in the case of PUNA the lack of it: deserts, gigantic salt flats, toxicmineral deposits, even her shocking images of desiccated animals, are all but aconsequence of the same process. Where there is no water there can be no life.This desert plateau amidst the Andean range between Argentina, Chile and Bolivia has an average height of 4000 metres (13000 feet) above seal level, so high that the word Puna is also synonymous in this region for altitude sickness. The Spanish conquistadores called it “el despoblado” - the uninhabited place.
Yet the volcanoes of the Puna harbor some of the most important Inca sanctuaries in the world such as the Llullaillaco volcano where thanks to one of the driest climates on earth three perfectly mummified children were found by a National Geographic expedition in 1999.The PUNA symbolises a world devoid of water and devoid of life.
Inner Spectrum
Andean Shrine I
Island of Hope
Arizaro
Andean Shrine II
Little Elixir
Elixir I
Incognito II
Incognito III
Elixir II
Andean Tincture
Andean Sphynx- Limited Edition of 7 (plus 2 artist prints)available in 100 x 160 cms or 120 x 180 cms (39.55" x 63" or 47.25 " x 70.86")XL Edition of 4 (plus 1 artist print)200 cms x 300 cms (78.74" x 118.11")Printed on Hahnemühle "Bamboo" paper, the world’s first digital fine art inkjet paper. It is made from 90 % bamboo fibers and 10% cotton, combining spiritual photography with environmental friendliness. This natural warm-toned, smooth surfaced and OBA free genuine art paper offers maximum aging resistance.
Description
.The Puna is one of the few places in the world that man has not been able to modify, but instead has modified man. This desert plateau amidst the Andean range between Argentina, Chile and Bolivia has an average height of 4000 meters (13000 feet) above seal level, and the word Puna is also synonymous in this region for altitude sickness.
The Spanish conquistadores called it “el despoblado” - the uninhabited place. Yet the volcanoes of the Puna harbor some of the most important Inca sanctuaries in the world such as the Llullaillaco volcano where three perfectly mummified children were found by a National Geographic expedition in 1999.
During the mid 19th century “caravans of death” carried supplies from Argentina to the Chilean saltpeter mines in the Atacama Desert known as the most arid place on earth. The cold, the lack of water, and food, made this a grueling journey for man and beast alike, and the desert is littered with the remains of those animals that didn’t make it.
The Spanish conquistadores called it “el despoblado” - the uninhabited place. Yet the volcanoes of the Puna harbor some of the most important Inca sanctuaries in the world such as the Llullaillaco volcano where three perfectly mummified children were found by a National Geographic expedition in 1999.
During the mid 19th century “caravans of death” carried supplies from Argentina to the Chilean saltpeter mines in the Atacama Desert known as the most arid place on earth. The cold, the lack of water, and food, made this a grueling journey for man and beast alike, and the desert is littered with the remains of those animals that didn’t make it.
Fields
Photography, Visual Arts, Photojournalism
Date
2011
Other Projects
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ICE - Berg
ICE (H20) is an ongoing project that portrays the effects of GLOBAL WARMING.
Glaciers calve into the ocean, giant bergs float nimbly across Patagonian lakes, waves lick and gnaw at ice-bergs creating astounding shapes and forms. Tiny crystals lie on an Antarctic beach, deposited by the tides, blown into shape by the katabatic winds.
The result are abstract shapes and patterns in unrealistic colours, ephemeral sculptures created by the elements. But all this beauty is deceiving - it is death that we are looking at - , the final moments of an element (H20) in transformation, its regression from a solid to a liquid state.
Jasmine Rossi’s images present the beginning of a catastrophe. Like the perfect calm before a hurricane, or the glorious light illuminating the sky before a massive storm, the eerie beauty of the wondrous shapes and forms created by the melting ice and frozen in time by her camera are illusory. 2011 Photography, Visual Arts, Photojournalism -
ICE - Green
GREEN ICE is extremely rare. Like blue ice it is very old and dates back from a time when the planet was still pristine. Green ice includes microscopic algae and is a metaphor for the delicate composition of the ocean’s waters and the balance of the elements on the planet.
2011
Photography, Visual Arts, Photojournalism
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ICE - Crystal
TRANSPARENT ICE represents the final stage in the metamorphosis of disintegration from solid to liquid state. As it dissolves oxygen seeps between the cracks and it turns white and then transparent. Transparent ice is a metaphor for the final stages of destruction, for the dissolution of the natural order.
2011
Photography, Visual Arts, Photojournalism
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ICE - Blue
BLUE ICE is the most ancient ice. Flushed out from the innermost core of a glacier, the bluer the ice – the older it is – it may be hundreds or even thousands of years old. Blue ice was formed at a time when the poles had not yet been reached by man, and the world was still uncontaminated. Thus, blue ice is a metaphor for the purity lost.
2011
Photography, Visual Arts, Photojournalism
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ICE - Black
BLACK ICE, tainted by volcanic ash and rock, is a metaphor for pollution. As it slowly flows from the glacier it reminds us of filthy rivers and black clouds of toxic fumes emanating from chimneystacks in China or the former Soviet Union, where the sun never shines and nature is has been destroyed. Black is the future if we continue the reckless exploitation of our natural resources.
2011
Visual Arts, Photography, Photojournalism
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Salt
SALT follows Rossi’s ICE series. The artist ponders what would happen after the glaciers have melted, if global temperatures continue to increase? As water evaporates and lakes disappear…. Salt flats - massive evaporative basins that extend for miles – will appear as they already have in other times in the planet’s history.
Salt has played a vital part in religious ritual in many cultures, symbolizing immutable, incorruptible purity, but if CO2 levels increase and global warming intensifies it will eventually cause our demise. 2011 Photography, Visual Arts, Photojournalism -
Araucaria
This project is under construction
2011
Photography, Visual Arts, Photojournalism
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Patagonia
The alienation of man from nature is the leitmotif in all of Jasmine Rossi’s work.
The images show the world as it must have been over millions of years, a world in which humans have no place. But it would be wrong to describe them as naïve:
They are conscious compositions that articulate a sense of vulnerability and desperation as they bear witness to an incredible beauty that is fading away forever.
The result is a portfolio that expresses nostalgia for one of the last great frontiers in today’s shrinking world. At the same time it voices the artist’s passionate plea to put an end to the destruction of our environment so that ultimately, these pictures may also be interpreted as an attempt to provoke a change in the way we view our world. 2011 Photography, Digital Photography, Visual Arts -
Creatures
“Rossi has captured unrecorded animal behavior intimately, in a way that has seldom been seen She has accomplished, through artistic talent and physical determination, an almost impossible dream.
Jim Fowler,
host of the Emmy Award-winning Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom series
“Jasmine Rossi’s photographs of Patagonia’s coastal wild animals and seascapes are both beautiful and shocking. She portrays its cycles of birth and death and of storm and calm with rare technical skill (they are) a passionate contribution to the growing campaign of those working to protect the wildlife of Patagonia.”
Dr. William Conway, former president, Wildlife Conservation Society 2011 Photography, Visual Arts -
Deception
Deception is a project about Man’s struggle to dominate the unassailable forces of Nature, it is a story of greed and ultimate failure.
Deception Island in Antarctica became the home of the world’s southernmost whaling station in 1907.
Like Ahab battling Moby Dick, the whalers ventured out in small wooden rowboats, among towering icebergs and the giant waves of the world’s most tempestuous ocean.
The island’s name is synonymous to the fate of many whalers: going about their bloody business in grueling conditions, many men died far away from home, deceived by their own voracity and the lure of a distant bounty.
Their legacy is the decimation of an entire whale and seal population, which has never recovered from this onslaught.
The oxidizing pressure cookers, the rotten buildings, and the bleached bones that litter the beaches, are the monuments the whaler’s set to themselves.
Like all of Rossi’s work, Deception focuses on the eradication of the world’s habitats and reminds us that no place and no living being is safe from ultimate destruction. 2011 Photography, Photojournalism, Visual Arts -
WaterWorlds
This project is under construction.
2011
Photography, Visual Arts, Photojournalism
