/
1
2
3
4
5
6
·
·
·
·
·
·
Michael Namingha
artist
My photography-based Chaco series began in 2020. It is based on my research on oil and natural gas extraction occurring in the northwest corner of New Mexico. The extraction sites are located near the 1,000-year-old Chaco Canyon, a place sacred to the Hopi and Puebloan people of Arizona and New Mexico. In 2014 NASA discovered the largest methane gas cloud in North America sits over this region. The Environmental Defense Fund has estimated oil and gas emissions in New Mexico to exceed 1.1 million metric tons per year. On satellite images this cloud appears red, pink, yellow, and orange. I manipulated the sky in my photographs to represent the colors of the methane gas cloud. The images I composed provide the viewer with an abstracted composition. The pieces are digital chromogenic prints face-mounted to shaped Plexiglas. The shaped aspect of my compositions creates a three-dimensional effect out of a two-dimensional object, removing photography from the confines of a rectangle or a square.