Landscape Studies

in Isolation

Photo series

2020

After the state of emergency was declared in Estonia because of Covid-19 in March 2020, I began to take frequent car rides outside of Tallinn. As the swamps and bogs were full of people trying to escape into nature, I went looking for areas with minimal possibilities of human interaction. Because I grew up by the sea, it seemed only natural that I started to hike around the northern coast, west of Tallinn. The exposure to the natural elements on the beach helped to alleviate the symptoms of isolation that I experienced in my 30 square foot apartment in the pandemic conditions. For the first time in my life I began to really notice coastal erosion because the areas where I went did not have sandy beaches. This scenery looked very dramatic to me. The trees were holding on to small patches of land and it looked like landslides were very frequent occurrences there. I started to see this supposedly wild terrain not just as a meeting point of landforms, water and weather but as a landscape in the context of climate change. Estonia has always appeared to be something not affected by the global climate and a safe haven from disasters but the winds are getting stronger and global sea levels are rising. There are other more visible signs of climate change in Estonia but the thought that we are losing land to the sea resonated with me. To see something that previously seemed untamed, as a human landscape, enclosed the sublime open sea horizon for myself.