SARAH CHRISTIANSON - EXPOSURE INTERNATIONAL OPEN CALL

Since 2012, I have been documenting the legacy of oil booms and busts in my home state of North Dakota. My photographs bear witness to the transformation of its quiet agrarian landscape into an industrialized zone dotted with well sites, criss-crossed by pipelines, illuminated by natural gas flares, contaminated by oil and saltwater spills, and fracked beyond recognition.

North Dakota is no stranger to the oil industry. Its previous booms of the 1950s and 1970s peaked with 3,000 active oil wells. The current Bakken Boom has now added over 10,000 new wells that pump out more than a million barrels of oil per day, due to horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking.

Everyone wants a piece of the action, including my family: since this boom began, we’ve been profiting from wells drilled on land my great-grandparents homesteaded in 1912. Although other families are doing the same, I started this project to reconcile our involvement with the hidden costs of this prosperity.

In 1973, North Dakota’s Governor, Art Link, envisioned: “We do not want to halt progress... We simply want to insure the most efficient and environmentally sound method of utilizing our precious resources for the benefit of the broadest number of people possible. And when we are through with that and the landscape is quiet again...let those who follow and repopulate the land be able to say, our grandparents did their job well. The land is as good and in some cases better than before.”

Unfortunately, his hope for the future remains a fantasy thus far: our grandparents did not do their job well. I examine the scars from prior boom-and-bust cycles and the new wounds being inflicted upon my home because the status quo must change: something needs to be left for the next generation, not just the next quarter.

BIOGRAPHY

I grew up on a four-generation family farm in eastern North Dakota (an hour north of Fargo). Immersed in that vast expanse of the Great Plains and surrounded by family, I developed a strong affinity for this landscape and its stories. This connection to place has had a profound effect on my work: despite moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2009, I continue to document the subtleties and nuances of the Midwestern landscape and experience through long-term photographic projects.

I hold an MFA in photography from the University of Minnesota. My work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in the collections of Duke University, the National Museum of Photography in Copenhagen, and several institutions in the Midwest. I have received grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Center for Cultural Innovation. As an educator, I currently teach classes in photography at City College of San Francisco, as well as private lessons and workshops. My first book, "Homeplace" (Daylight Books, 2013), documents the history and uncertain future of my family’s farm by interweaving photographs with old snapshots and historical documents selected from our family archive. My ongoing project, "When the Landscape is Quiet Again," examines the oil boom and its effects on the environment occurring in the western half of North Dakota. Throughout my work, I use my personal experiences and connection to the land to evoke a strong sense of place, history, and time.