Verdant branches of a majestic maple spread like wings, making way for a diagonal of power lines through its clipped crown in Suzanne Rose’s 44°48’06.1″N 87°22’15.5W (Maple with Directional Cut Crown).

Titled with their GPS coordinates, Rose’s rich monochrome photographs document the Age of Anthropocene in the rural Midwest and explore the imperfect friendship between man and nature through a fusion of the lush expansive landscapes of late nineteenth-century photography with the stark, unromanticized views of man-altered environments characteristic of the 1970s New Topographics. Composed with a concerned eye for how symbolism shapes our thinking, this mesmerizing image from Rose’s Blind Spot series highlights the resilience of nature and asks viewers to reflect on what we have valued, what we have forgotten to protect, and what we can learn about adaptation and reconciliation from nature’s example as we move forward.

Based in northeast Wisconsin, Rose studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and led a successful design firm before transitioning to a career in fine art photography. Her work is included in the permanent collections at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and Museum of Wisconsin Art, which has thirty-three photographs from the Blind Spot series in its permanent collection.