Early landscape photographers often approached their subject as if seeing it for the first time—venturing with their cumbersome cameras into terrains that appeared boundless, untouched, and inexhaustible. Their images carried the thrill of discovery, framing wilderness as a pristine and abundant frontier waiting to be revealed. That dynamic has unmistakably shifted. Today, landscape photography is shaped by a sense of narrowing time, tracing places in flux—altered, diminishing, or on the verge of vanishing—images made in the hope that bearing witness might preserve something of what is being lost.

I find myself returning again and again to the same quiet ache—a feeling that the landscapes we once looked to as a portal to the sublime may be breathing their last breaths. The medium of analog photography behaves like a perfect vessel, a reliquary: it holds the trace of something fleeting, something already in the process of becoming memory. As I gathered this selection of photographs, I realized that these landscapes were not simply depictions of the world as it is, but meditations on the worlds that remain—those we’ve lost, those we’re destroying, and those that might outlive us.

These fifteen photographers—working independently, across disparate geographies—have each captured landscapes that seem to breathe on their own terms, often imagining futures in which human presence has thinned or vanished entirely. Some images feel like elegies for wild places already gone; others gesture toward eco-futurist possibilities, suggesting land that continues to shape itself beyond our occupancy. Many hover in the space between, where grief and the sublime coalesce.

The works shown here do not mourn passively; they reframe the landscape as a living archive, one that remembers our touch but is not defined by it. Through these fifteen lenses, the land becomes both witness and protagonist, revealing what is fragile, what is enduring, and what stories linger in the silvered grains long after the moment of exposure has passed.

-Elizabeth Flinsch, Editor of Shots Magazine

Introducing: 15 Film Photographers Reframing Landscape Photography!

**“Source” by Andreas John | Sinar 5x7, Ilford HP5+, tray developed in Black, White & Green. Photogravure print**

Andreas John | @inthehandsofbeauty | www.inthehandsofbeauty.com

Commentary from Elizabeth Flinsch

This photograph by Andreas John feels like an act of preservation. It draws the viewer into the hushed, subliminal beauty of the woods—the moss underfoot, the dampness in the air, the soft filtering of light through leaves. There is nothing forced or declarative here, only a quiet attentiveness to the textures and rhythms of the forest. The image carries the desire to remember, to hold onto a sensory experience that is fleeting by nature.

ARTIST BIO

As a child, I remember exploring my parents’ darkroom: a ramshackle space next to our garage: the red safe lights, three trays of chemicals, and the string draped with drying prints. I loved the feel of their Leica and Nikon cameras and the buttons on the light meter, the ritual of loading 35 mm film, and the solid, definitive click of the shutter.

I have now inherited my grandfather's old Leica camera, and I feel so honored to carry on this passion and artistry. When I have a camera in my hands, time seems to bend, and the world lights up around me. We live in an incredible time of possibility with imagery, we are truly In The Hands of Beauty. What a deep privilege to witness, learn, explore, and create in this way. I look forward to co-creating with you and manifesting your media visions into reality.

**“I Won’t Give Up” by Carl Rubino | Holga, 120 Film**

Carl Rubino | @carlrubinophotography | carlrubinophotography.com

Commentary from Elizabeth Flinsch

Carl Rubino’s photograph is stirring in its simplicity and depth. A structure remains – sinking, but hanging on – despite its evident failure. What could read as ruin instead becomes a study in persistence. The image functions as metaphor without feeling forced, speaking to endurance, futility, and the human impulse to build against inevitability. Rubino allows this dock to hold its own meaning within the landscape, neither romanticizing nor condemning it. The result is a photograph that lingers, asking us to consider what it means to persist when purpose has already begun to drop below the surface.

ARTIST BIO

Carl is largely a self-taught fine art photographer who lives year-round in the Adirondacks of northern New York. He photographs primarily in his native location and the surrounding region. He constantly challenges himself to explore new ways to see and interpret what lies before him, following Thoreau’s expression that “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

His work has been repeatedly featured as a portfolio winner and has been reviewed in Black & White Magazine. His photography has been published in Adirondack Life and Seven Days, Vermont. Carl has been exhibited in two-artist exhibitions at Lake Placid Center for The Arts. His photography has had solo exhibitions at VIEW, Northwind Fine Art and Point of View Gallery in northern New York; Legacy Gallery in Nyack, NY; SEABA, Shelburne Art Center, Lille Fine Art Salon, Designhaus and Brickels Gallery in Burlington, VT; and Diana Felber Gallery in the Berkshires, MA. He has been in juried and curated exhibitions at Sohn Fine Art and Lichtenstein Arts Center in the Berkshires of MA, and Smithy Pioneer Gallery’s Invitational Curated Photography Show: "Statement - "fifteen of the best photographers in upstate New York" in Cooperstown, NY. His work is included in a hardcover contemporary photography book, “The Pictorial List: Volume One – New York”, published in 2024.

His photography is in permanent collections of The Waskow Collection of Northern New England Museum of Contemporary Art (NNEMoCA) in Vermont and VIEW Arts in Old Forge, NY, and hangs on the walls of homes and businesses regionally as well as commercial locations such as the Hilton Hotel and medical offices and locations including Fletcher Allen Hospital and medical practices in and around the Burlington, VT area.

He has taught photography with Adirondack Photography Institute, Inlet, NY and Shelburne Art Center, Shelburne, VT and in his own classes at various NY and Vermont locations, and has led photography tours in the Adirondacks. He is largely self-taught but has attended numerous workshops and is deeply inspired and influenced by abstract painters and the work of other photographers.

**“Yosemite 7” by Christa Ougel | Hasselblad 500c/m, Lady Gray 120 film**

Christa Ougel | @axirhx___

Commentary from Elizabeth Flinsch

Christa uses double exposure as a means of destabilizing perception. By collapsing multiple viewpoints into a single frame, her work confuses our sense of space, orientation, and scale. These are not landscapes that can be easily navigated. Instead, they feel remembered or dreamed—places reconstructed through fragments rather than observed whole. The resulting images are impossible in the best sense, hovering somewhere between physical terrain and internal geography.

ARTIST BIO

My work explores the unpredictable nature of film by embracing the unexpected through experimental techniques such as chemical manipulation, in-camera multiple exposures, layering of negatives, expired film, and solarization. By engaging with these processes, I'm able to relinquish a bit of control, allowing the medium itself to shape the outcome. As the film or print degrades, form becomes abstract, lending a darker, ethereal quality to the final image.

This element of chance is integral to my practice — each photograph reveals itself in its own time, inviting me to uncover its meaning or 'life force' only after development. Within these fragmented forms lies an understated theme of longing and absence, evoking a sense of the liminal - that elusive space between dreams. Through this process, I explore subconscious desires and the beauty found in imperfections - a reminder that the unplanned moments often hold the most profound significance.

**“Redwood Roots #6” by Cisco Lassiter | Leica MP**

Cisco Lassiter | No Social Media or Website

Commentary from Elizabeth Flinsch

There is a density to Cisco Lassiter’s images that rewards sustained looking. My eye moves through this photograph the way roots once moved through soil—searching, branching, refusing to settle too quickly. Within the frame are multiple entry points: water catching light, a small bridge, a path that recedes into the forest and invites speculation. Each element feels deliberate, part of a larger visual investigation. Nothing feels incidental. The image unfolds as a series of quiet vignettes, each one deepening the sense of place.

ARTIST BIO

I am an investigator both by trade and artistic sensibility. In my day job as a court-appointed indigent defense investigator and post conviction mitigation specialist, I search, observe, surveil, examine, locate, and study/research. As a documentary photographer, I do the same, with one key difference — as a photographer, in addition to people, places, and things, I also search for and utilize light. As a committed amateur, I have had the luxury of avoiding categorization. But if I had to put a label on it, I’d say I am a documentary people/place/street photographer. In short, I photograph anything and everything I find interesting. I do as little post-processing as possible, as I am a Luddite at heart (hence my somewhat impractical attachment to analogue photography). I have committed my practice to the print rather than the screen and have no social media presence. Nonetheless, I do want to share my work and have begun building a website in recent months. Stay tuned.

**“Icelandic impressions #1” by Eirik Holmøyvik | Holga, Kodak Trix 400 120 film, Silver Gelatin Lith Process**

Eirik Holmøyvik | @eirik.holmoyvik | holmoyvik.com

Commentary from Elizabeth Flinsch

This image by Eirik Holmøyvik has stayed with me long after first encountering his work submitted for a Shots Magazine call. While I’ll readily admit a bias toward photographs made with toy cameras, there is something here that extends beyond the charm of the medium. The disappearing road is a familiar visual metaphor, but Eirik complicates it through shadow and density. What could be read as nostalgic instead feels unsettled, as though the path forward is not simply unknown but quietly foreboding.

ARTIST BIO

I am a Norwegian photographer working mostly with analogue processes. The landscape of Western Norway is the cornerstone of my work – simply because this is the landscape which I was born into and where I live today. I print my analogue photographs in the darkroom as silver gelatin prints. I also love alternative printing processes, and I print digital photographs as platinum and palladium prints and palladium toned kallitype prints.

**“Untitled” by Emily Rinard | Holga & Nikon F4 (using 120 film & 35mm from B&W, color, and cross process film). Double exposures with both 120 & 35mm film**

Emily Rinard | @photonerd_emily

Commentary from Elizabeth Flinsch

This photograph lingers with me; quietly in a way that is difficult to shake. A more subtle double exposure here adds a layer of distance and dreaminess. This softness is met with the stark unappealing scene of what looks to be a suburban drainage pond. The mysterious figure pulls us in—an invitation to sit with the bleakness rather than look away from it. We are left with more questions the longer we sit with it.

ARTIST BIO

My father gave me my first camera when I was 8 years old. Decades later, photography is still the way I prefer to communicate with the world. I photograph to understand the events of the past. I don't want history to repeat itself.

**“My Dear” by Fred Johnsson | Asahi Pentax Auto 110, Lomography Orca B&W 100 110 Pocket Film**

Fred Johnsson | fredjohnsson.de

Commentary from Elizabeth Flinsch

Fred Johnsson’s image is deceptively simple, yet it carries a remarkable emotional charge. It could be read as a speculative vision—the last human standing before a scarred, burned landscape, pausing to take stock of what remains. Or it could be something far quieter: a solitary figure walking, listening, bearing witness. The photograph leaves room for both interpretations, and it is in that ambiguity that its power resides. Stripped of excess, the image feels poetic and open, allowing the viewer to project their own sense of loss, curiosity, or reverence onto the land.

ARTIST BIO

I work as a self-taught photographer in my small studio in the heart of Hamburg and have been taking photographs for many years. It all started with analog cameras and my own darkroom, where I learned the basics of exposure, development, and printing. I acquired my technical and artistic skills through self-study and various workshops. By regularly visiting numerous art exhibitions and submitting my work to competitions and group exhibitions, I sharpened my critical eye for my own work. Today, I use both analog and digital techniques, with my artistic focus on conceptual photography.

**“Convergence” by Jen Cohen | Pinsta 4x5 pinhole camera, Harman Direct Positive paper**

Jen Cohen | @pinstafanatics | rawartcollective.org/jenpinhole

Commentary from Elizabeth Flinsch

Jen Cohen embraces the unpredictability of the pinhole camera, allowing chance and distortion to guide the image as much as intention. The resulting landscapes feel unstable, as though they are slipping out of our grasp even as we look at them. Glitches and long exposures render the terrain eerie and alien, resisting fixed geography or time. In Jen’s hands, the pinhole becomes a tool for disorientation—one that mirrors the uncertainty of the landscapes themselves.

ARTIST BIO

Jen lives in the PNW with a realization of how very little we can sense or know. She takes photographs with a Pinsta pinhole camera or a fizzy water can with a tiny hole, welcoming the surprises of this slow, unpredictable way of seeing. It’s how she moves through the world, with curiosity and openness to what might emerge.

**“Cloud Bridge” by Jennifer Bong | Holga, 120 Black and White film**

Jennifer Bong | @jfleurfoto

Commentary from Elizabeth Flinsch

Made with a Holga and layered through double exposure, the photograph embraces the camera’s rudimentary nature rather than resisting it. The softness, subtle toning, and imprecision become essential to the image’s emotional register. We find ourselves occupying two places at once—moving across time rather than through it—where overlapping moments accumulate rather than resolve. The landscape feels less observed than remembered, as if these visions are being gathered, held, and gently committed to memory.

ARTIST BIO

A NorthEast Minneapolis-based photographer, Jennifer Bong, is passionate about the process and emotion of her work. Since the late 1970s, with a Bachelor of Arts, mostly in studies of photography, she has always felt strongly about the use of black and white film of various formats. Her prints are made in the darkroom, then sepia-toned, and many are then hand-tinted.

**“Lancelin 1” by John Toohey | Nikon FM2 35mm, Adox 20**

John Toohey | @jtoohey929

Commentary from Elizabeth Flinsch

This photograph by John Toohey depicts abandoned trash in the Lancelin Sand Dunes in Western Australia, a place often celebrated for its vastness and pristine beauty. Rather than turning away from the intrusion, John centers it. The image refuses the fantasy of untouched wilderness and instead presents the landscape as it exists—marked by human presence and carelessness. What lingers is not outrage but a quiet reckoning. The dunes, shaped by wind and time, remain indifferent, slowly absorbing what was left behind. In this tension between endurance and neglect, the photograph becomes a record of consequence as much as place.

ARTIST BIO

John Toohey lives in Perth, Australia. has an M.A in Art History from Concordia in Montreal and an Honours Degree in History from UWA in Perth. He has published three books of history, including Captain Bligh’s Portable Nightmare (4th Estate, Harper Collins, Skyhorse) and Strange Journeys (Vulpine Press). His practice combines photography and social history, and includes the production of audiowalks, engaging listeners, readers, and viewers in appreciating the hidden traces of the city around them.He has exhibited and published his photographs in Australia and overseas and his work is held in national collections. His books and articles have had international success. In 2019, he won the Lawrence Wilson Art Writing Prize for Ailsa Lee-Brown’s portrait by Adelaide Perry. In 2025, his work was selected and featured in the Lensculture Street Photography Awards. Every year, he has an exhibition at Earlywork Gallery in South Fremantle featuring the work of photographers using film.

**"Rest by Water" by Landry Major with Cash Kasper | Double Exposure of Polaroid 35mm Polachrome instant slide film and a landscape image. Shot on Nikon 90 and Canon 5DS.**

Landry Major with Cash Kasper | @landrymajorart | landrymajor.com

Commentary from Elizabeth Flinsch

Landry Major’s collaboration with her late son, Cash Kaspar, is as tender as it is profound. The work carries the weight of both personal and ecological loss, though it never insists on being read narrowly. This image holds a shared gaze—one shaped by care, curiosity, and time spent looking closely at the world. Knowing the context deepens the experience, but even without it, the photographs radiate intimacy. They feel less like documentation and more like communion: with the land, with memory, and with a relationship that continues to exist through the act of seeing.

ARTIST BIO

Landry Major is an American artist based in Portland, Oregon. Her imagery explores the ideas of home, culture and our relationship to the land and animals that we steward. In a world that has become more virtual and digital, her work is a reminder of a more visceral and simple life. Landry has won honors from Critical Mass, Communications Arts, and Lurzer’s Archive. Her work has been seen in Black + White Magazine(UK), Analog Forever Magazine, Western Art Collector, The New York Times, and Time Magazine.

Cash Kasper attended Columbia College Chicago for photography and was Ian Ruhter's second wet plate assistant. Cash loved the old analog processes. He chronicled his struggles and looked for the light.

**“Leap” by Liz Potter | Noblex Pro 06/150 medium format camera fitted with a 100-year-old Kodak self-timer, Kodak Tmax 400**

Liz Potter | @lizpotterphotography | lizpotterphotography.com

Commentary from Elizabeth Flinsch

I first encountered Liz Potter’s work through a submission to Shots Magazine, and this image—featured in issue #167—stood out immediately. Liz experiments with how the human figure occupies and disrupts the landscape, introducing a subtle humor without undermining the photograph’s integrity. The result is playful but considered, reminding us that landscape photography can hold wit alongside wonder, and that curiosity can be a form of engagement rather than detachment.

ARTIST BIO

Liz Potter is a film photographer based in the far western region of Texas. Having earned a degree in photojournalism in 1990 from the University of Texas, Austin, she lived in the city for 30 more years before creating a new chapter in her life in 2018 by moving to a remote, high desert town with a population of 6,000.

The expanse of land and sky prompted an expanse in creativity. Working within the landscapes and small towns of rural Texas, a sense of adventure she had always lived by developed into an almost insatiable hunger to deeply experience this new region; connecting to it by recording it on film. With a home darkroom, she’s able to develop and print her work, further crafting the interpretation of her images.

Her cameras of choice are often chosen to fit the inspiration. On heavy rotation are the Noblex 150, a medium format panoramic film camera, a couple of 6x6 square format cameras, a 1914 folding camera, and an assortment of Polaroid cameras. The end goal, whether conscious or not, is to bring the viewer along on her adventures.

**“i dig my fingers into the mire and leave the peat bruised and seeping. 2023” by M. Prull | Xerox transfer on canvas board and 22k gold leaf**

M. Prull | No Social Media or Website

Commentary from Elizabeth Flinsch

I came upon M.’s work in the flat files at BlueSky/Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts in Portland. The PCNW Drawers house an annually curated selection of regional artists’ work; a photonerd’s dream of a treasure hunt. I was so struck by the intimacy and imperfections of these little canvases, but there was no artist’s name on the work. Luckily, when I went to the front desk to inquire, M. was working and said, “Oh, that’s mine.” I was delighted to hear about his process and the connection to the Japanese kinsugi practice of repairing damaged pottery with gold leaf.

ARTIST BIO

Originally from Walla Walla, WA, M Prull (American, b. 1996, he/him) is a multimedia artist using photography to explore transgender identities and relationships with the natural world. His art practice explores the fluid boundaries between mind, body, spirit, and place as experienced through a queer and transgender lens. His current body of work focuses on fostering and repairing personal relationships with the land, reflecting and reinforcing the repair done with his own relationship with his queer identity. Each image is printed via Xerox transfers, which result in imperfect prints. In these areas of damage and imperfection, M gilds the image, drawing upon the concept of Kintsugi, or “golden joinery,” to emphasize the beauty of breakage and repair in the evolution of personal identity.

**“Before the Gales” by Thomas Thro | Harmon Red Scale 35mm film**

Thomas Thro | @tom_thro

Commentary from Elizabeth Flinsch

A former student of mine, Thomas, is a kind of analog mad scientist—constantly experimenting with processes and materials. This image of Lake Superior, made in his home city of Duluth, Minnesota, is shot on redscale film muting the blues and greens we instinctively associate with water and sky. What should read as serene instead carries a subtle dystopian charge. Without resorting to spectacle or explanation, Thomas captures a generational eco-anxiety that hums beneath the surface—an unease that feels deeply embedded in the landscape itself.

ARTIST BIO

Thomas first started shooting analog film when he was 15 and has continued to this day. He takes inspiration from the quality of light and depth in film stills. Studying theater and cinema, he uses photography to explore his perspective on the shapes and spaces around him.

**“Railroad Vegetation” by ZD Hoopaugh | Pentacon Six TL, Ilford HP5 Plus 400)**

ZD Hoopaugh | @eyekor_images

Commentary from Elizabeth Flinsch

ZD Hoopaugh’s work pushes the definition of landscape further, asking us to reconsider where the natural world ends and the human-made begins. In this image, nature asserts itself—taking root, overgrowing, reclaiming structures that once signaled occupation or control. The photograph speculates a future shaped by abandonment rather than development, where human presence recedes, and the land resumes its own logic. Rather than framing this as destruction, ZD presents it as resilience, offering a vision ofa landscape that persists, adapts, and ultimately outlasts us.

ARTIST BIO

ZD Hoopaugh is a rhetor and artist who practices photography under the Eyekor Images brand. Most of his work involves excavating the site of seeing, the architecture of the image, and the rhetoric of art. Utilizing film & digital photography, polemic, essay, literature, and art, ZD Hoopaugh explores the event of every performance through multiple mediums.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Elizabeth Flinsch is a photographer and otherwise transdisciplinary artist living in Saint Paul, MN. She earned a BFA from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. After many years in the non-profit gallery world in Minneapolis, Elizabeth turned to photography in order to find a deeper connection to the world around her. She has led travel photography workshops worldwide, served as a portfolio reviewer at Photolucida and PhotoNola, and is the Editor of Shots Magazine, a journal of black and white fine art photography. Her work has been exhibited in galleries both nationally and internationally.

Connect with Elizabeth on Instagram!