The Living Dune

Jockey’s Ridge in Nag’s Head has changed in shape over thousands of years and continues to move incrementally southward to this day, threatening nearby homes and roads. There have been large scale and costly attempts to stem this natural process, which highlights the often fraught relationship between human behavior and the “natural” environment.

In photographing Jockey’s Ridge, Ben Alper and Peter Hoffman sought to heighten the camera’s predisposition toward distortion, as a means of addressing the kind of intervention present (albeit invisibly) at the site. Whether that manifests through artificial or colored light, spatial confusion, performative gestures or the literal or metaphorical depiction of others, the resulting images foreground photographic decisions that ultimately implicate a human presence in this fragile landscape.

Their photographs will be displayed at 140 W. Franklin Street from February 21 – March 22nd.
Exhibit Hours:
Thursdays and Fridays from 4-7 pm
Saturdays and Sundays from 12-6 pm

The 140 W. Franklin St space is powered by Arts Everywhere, Chapel Hill Community Arts and Culture, and Downtown Partnership.