Ancient Medicine 21

In Brian Merriam’s Ancient Medicine series, taken during Merriam’s travels through Alaska, the horizon is purposefully disregarded to give a feeling of immersion in the geology, asking the viewer to consider the slow tick of eons that have led to these compositions. A cliff face could be a boulder, a mountain no larger than a grain of sand.

Through this shift in perspective, Merriam invites the viewer to consider time not in human years, but in the slow rhythms of the earth itselfwhere erosion, upheaval, and transformation are constants, and our own existence is fleeting. To stand before these images is to feel the weight of deep time, to sense the patience of the land, and to wonder at our place within it. Likening the process to painting with time, objects and landscapes of monumental size take on an ambiguous scale.

Brian Merriams landscapes are more than photographs; they are meditations on time itself. Following the death of his father in 2016, Merriam spent a year seeking out places where the earth reveals its own historywhere layers of sediment, the remnants of glaciers, and the scars of volcanism tell a story measured in millennia. Camping for days at a time, waiting for the right light, he immersed himself in these vast, indifferent spaces, finding solace in their permanence.