A visual discovery of a land not typically thought of in California, this debut looks at the historic Santa Maria Valley, known for its vineyards and agriculture, and associates it with the environmental cost of human need. Landfill is a collection of eye-opening photographs made by Brett Kallusky in California’s historic Santa Maria Valley, one of the world’s great wine-growing areas. This body of work, however, directs our attention to a small section of the landscape: to the entwined systems of vast agricultural production and the waste it creates. The photographs reveal scenes that are literally hidden from public view and knowledge, underscoring their nature as evidentiary documentation: a microcosm with ramifications far beyond its geographical boundaries. Kallusky’s interest does not end there, for his depiction of this famous Central California landscape creates an opportunity for contemplative reflection of our complicit involvement, if only by eating the strawberries, carrots, and cauliflower that is grown here and transported to grocery stores throughout the U.S. Thus, despite the cool formalism and detached documentary style of the pictures, assembled together as they are in this book, they engage in an extended consideration, drawing viewers into a new relationship with this place. Addressing the current, human-centered epoch known as the Anthropocene, the quiet but powerful imagery of Kallusky’s Landfill examines important questions of how the land is used and regarded. The landscape reveals who we are, as he brings these invisible spaces into visibility, showing how the earth supports our food needs on a massive scale, fueling a massive engine of consumption. What is left in the wake of that system to which we all belong? AUTHOR: Brett Kallusky was born in 1975 in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in Afton, Minnesota. He completed his B.F.A. in photography at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls and his M.F.A. in photography at Cranbrook Academy of Art. Since 2012 he has taught photography at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, where he is an associate professor in the Department of Art. He has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and Fulbright Travel Grant to Italy and has received three Minnesota State Arts Board Initiative Grants.
