Pizol Glacier, Death Mask (Triptych), from series ‘Once Was’, 2025

How do we mourn for more-than-human deaths, when all that remains of loss is empty space? ‘Once Was’ depicts the hollow land left behind when glaciers melt, and the grief and guilt that coalesces in the bare earth revealed by their erasure. Images recording sites of recent glacier loss sit side by side with a series of death masks, made with rock, earth and meltwater collected from each site, and cast from a mould of the artist’s own face. Marina Warner refers to the death mask as the ‘psychological precursor’ to the photograph, in both form and use. A memorial photograph pre-photography, it acts as an object of grief and remembrance, the haunting of a presence no longer there. ‘Once Was’ shows these post-glacial landscapes to be a death mask themselves, cast from the moving form of the glacier that after death, leaves only its imprint behind in the earth. By showing the death mask as photograph, an extension of the environment it was cast from, the boundaries between the human and landscape begin to dissolve, as if the empty glacial valley is the negative mould from which the mask emerges; the Earth’s skin is our skin too. These images speak to our entanglement with, and responsibility for, these sites of loss. They are an elegy and prophecy both.

An Australian photographer in the early stages of her career, Rebecca has recently graduated from London College of Communication with an MA (Distinction) in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography. Her research-based practice sits between photography and other mediums, with work concerning the climate crisis and our relationship with the earth. Primarily focused on landscape, she is interested in the materiality of place, and often works directly with the environment to bring a trace of its history into the work.

Her work has been exhibited in recent exhibitions such as Sustainable Darkroom’s ‘The Active Image: Political Ecologies & Photographic Agency’, ‘Landscape’ at the Glasgow Gallery of Photography, ‘Oscillating Spaces’ at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and ‘Open House’ at Copeland Gallery, London. Her current body of work ‘Once Was’ builds on her interest in ecology, and was awarded the Metro Imaging Mentorship Prize (2024). A combination of photography and sculpture, it explores ecological grief, though landscape and death mask, and asks how to mourn for more-than-human loss.