These images were taken during a research trip to northeastern Argentina in July and August of 2008. With a grant from Tulane University's Stone Center, I traveled to Argentina to photograph three wetlands of biological signifcance, as defined by the RASMAR convention of wetlands list. The majority of photographs depict portions of the Esteros del Ibera, Corrientes province.

A major goal I had for my summer research in Argentina was to practice visually describing a biologically-significant wetland in a way that celebrated its ecological function, and not just its aesthetic charm. This goal was aimed at addressing a failing of traditional landscape photography, where the environment is too often depicted as passive, static and worthy of awe only for its aesthetic beauty. Such images of the landscape teach us to value ecosystems for their looks, not for their processes and crucial ecological role in supporting our livelihoods – be it by providing clean water or cleaner air.

Spending time photographing the Argentinian wetland areas, focusing not on the elegent herons drinking or hunting at dawn or the magnificent sunset cresting against the floating islands of grass, but on the changes in plant communities occurring at the water’s edge and a hundred yards inland or the dynamism of an invasive vine, obscuring the native canopy from below, I was able to practice a new method of landscape depiction. Under this methodology, images describe and celebrate the landscape in flux, and the landscape is anything but containable within a single frame. The images I have from my fieldwork in Argentina describe the wetland system as though it was a character, whose parts respond to the stimuli of the community, be it human or ecological.