Two Murray State University professors teamed up on a project to showcase how photography archives can be used to highlight changes to landscapes and spaces over time, with a focus on how both nature – whether through natural disaster or evolution – and human works can impact those places. Professor of photography Cintia Segovia Figueroa and professor of biology Kate He have worked together on this project since last fall and hope to generate discussion at a lecture on Thursday about climate change, conservation, and cultural history.
They are presenting “Shifting Landscapes: A Photographic Chronicle of Humanity and Nature in western Kentucky” this week as part of the university’s Humanities+ lecture series, funded by the Kentucky Art Council and the Kentucky Historical Society.
Segovia Figueroa said history isn’t just found in books: it can also be told through geography and the documentation of it.
“We wanted to also think about soil and people and how that impacts western Kentucky… This is combining photography and biology. There is going to be the impact of winter storms, vanishing geography and how places do not exist anymore,” she said.
He, the biology professor, said that nature photography can capture snapshots of landscapes, for example, and show how it changes over time or after events like natural disasters.
“Any change captured by our camera can effectively reflect anthropocentric impact on the landscape, just like the winter storms we had back in 2009 and 2022, and the photo I took for those events captured the icy environment,” said He. “The trees were falling down and people's lives were impacted. So we tried to go back to space in time, and just to show people how climate change can affect daily lives in the area.”
He said she was particularly drawn to capturing the biodiversity of an area through her photography to show the relationship between insects and nature.
“I captured many species, plants, birds, the flowers, nature and environment. For example, the scenery from Lake Barkley, the Hematite Lake, the surrounding area, they really present the beauty of nature, and most importantly, they provide ecosystem services to the area. So it's our duty to protect biodiversity for the region for a long time to come,” He said. “Because of climate change a lot of pollinator populations declined in recent years. So capturing the mutually beneficial relationship between bees, flowers, butterflies and different kinds of species, that's really rewarding as a biologist like me.”
Segovia Figueroa said the landscape has been documented over the years and their research took them to the university’s Pogue Library.
“Part of my research was to go to the Pogue Library and look at photographs and how even more downtown Murray has changed and other parts look the same,” Segovia Figueroa said. “A lot of our research was thinking about how these changes often are man-made, and other times they are just the climate change. For example the tobacco industry has changed. So having the comparison between a local family that was working the land and now having like immigrant workers working the tobacco fields is very different.”
"A lot of our research was thinking about how these changes often are man-made, and other times they are just the climate change."
Segovia Figueroa and He’s lecture on their project, , happening as part of Murray State’s Humanities+ series, will be on Thursday at 4 p.m. in Faculty Hall room 208 on the main campus of Murray State University. It is free and open to the public.
