In Mary Mattingly’s photo series “Second Nature,” the Earth has been submerged, and the remaining humans eke out isolated, nomadic existences. Her images may be staged and digitally enhanced, but like the other photographs and videos in ICP’s triennial “Ecotopia,” they seize on the very real anxieties created by a few seasons of hurricanes, tsunamis, and record-breaking heat. From Oregon’s clear-cut forests to Israel’s pine groves planted over the ruins of evacuated Arab towns, these artists show the “natural” environment as less a refuge than a global battleground.
—Ecotopia, International Center of Photography; September 14 through January 7 Next: Picasso and American Art at the Whitney