Rosemary Laing

Rosemary Laing originally trained as a painter in the late 1970s. She began working in the medium of photography in the late 1980s. Although she initially experimented with digital manipulation as a way to investigate how technologies can alter experiences of time and place, her more recent photographic work employs actual performers and installations. This work, from her series weather, considers human influence on the weather. In this staged photograph, a female performer is shown suspended and encircled by a whirlwind of shredded newspaper strips that largely obscure her. Swept up by hurricane-like forces—and surrounded by clippings of articles on climate change, the environment, and extreme weather—the figure at the center can be read as a casualty of inaction on climate change.