"The End of the Olive Grove" is a visual inquiry into the plight of the diseased olive tree population in the Italian region of Salento amidst the xyllela fastidiosa crisis. During a residency in Lecce in ‘21, I met Italian American anthropologist Angelica Calabrese, who studies the ramifications of the pathogen’s spread. “While endless olive-studded landscapes are often romanticized as culture, history, and identity, such romanticism can obscure the relations of power by which these landscapes are built: large-scale agriculture depends on dominance over land, and over the bodies that labor upon it,” she writes. We collaborated with my making photographs as Angelica interviewed farmers experimenting with agroforestry about the future of agriculture in a devastated environment. At the time, I was devastated too. Heartbroken in an unfamiliar place, I found kinship with the fields of charred sculptural forms, cleared shortly after I photographed them. I returned every season in ‘22, documenting 1 year in the lifecycle of a tree that has shaped the identity and culture of Salento for the past 2000 years, now amidst an environment unable to support it. The Lucie Scholarship will help me finalize this work by covering film, editing, scanning, & printing. I could pay Angelica for an essay. It can also support a trip to update the work. Dates: 2021 — 2025 Goals: Make c-prints Final trip to Salento Process, scan, print new images Hire an editor to help sequence Angelica's essay
