Bayou Lafourche Collage Technique

This project was an exercise in creating a surreal landscape from completely familiar imagery. In Bayou Lafourche the above two images are banal, a bridge and a levee, but given the uncertain future of the place these objects can be mixed together to tell an interesting story. I was trying to tell the story of an area that, due to sea level rise, has become inhospitable for traditional community and the only thing left are the living quarters for oil derrick workers.

The initial concept of the project required that the bridge and pipe images be spliced together, although not properly expressed in the final image, I wanted show how the pipes had been overwhelmed and were not longer operational. The viewer would see below the surface of the water to see these derelict pipes.

A sky is laid in and water is added to obscure the road.

A below water image is added with and overlay to give the look of looking below and above the water’s surface. Narrative elements such as the helicopter, distant bridge and oil derrick added.

This image uses color to denote a day-in-the-life narrative. The left portion showing a morning where the worker is flying to the oil rig, the middle portion showing the reoccupation of elevated structures, the right is the nighttime return to the bridge.

Annotation and graphs laid into the water surface section cut to give the scientific and economic rationale for this speculative image.