Lamentations

By Tina Freeman

Over the past eight years, Tina Freeman has photographed the Louisiana wetlands and Arctic and Antarctic glaciers. In Lamentations, Freeman pairs images from each place in a series of diptychs that address climate change, ecological balance, and the connectedness of things across time and space. Lamentations demonstrates how the rising waters along the coast of Louisiana are both visually and physically connected to the melting glaciers at the poles, despite the separation of vast distances. Freeman's work makes plain the crucial, threatening, and global dialogue between water in two physical states. Lamentations is published to accompany an exhibition of the same name, organized by and presented at the New Orleans Museum of Art, September 11, 2019 to March 22, 2020.

From the Foreword:

“By placing art and images connected to our region into a larger global context, they can be appreciated not only for their compelling visual beauty but also inspire interdisciplinary discussions that bring to the forefront the issues of our time.”

Susan M. Taylor, Montine McDaniel Freeman Director
New Orleans Museum of Art

From the Introduction

“This project profoundly engages with both its message and its messenger, with both the precarious existence of glaciers and wetlands and with photography itself.”

“Lamentations carries with it associations of mourning, of weeping (a powerful metaphor for the melting of ice), and of what happens in the wake of profound loss. Let us not just wait around to find out.”

Russell Lord
Curator of Photographs
New Orleans Museum of Art