Patrick Criag Manning:
Patrick Craig Manning is an Assistant Professor of Photography at the University of New Mexico. Born in Seattle, WA, he received degrees in photography and archeology from the University of Washington and his MFA from the University of New Mexico before going on to teach as a professor at the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis. His photographic, digital, and video work invokes loss to explore the intersection of representation, language, and history and has been exhibited at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Eiteljorg Museum of Indian and Western Art and galleries from coast to coast.
His current series the Delta look at how numerous small actions are driving large-scale environmental change. The current situation of the Mississippi River Delta is the result of a number of overlapping causes each the result of numerous small acts and pressures. While they are less evident than the hoof prints of cows, they can be seen in how we are modifying the delta.
The Mississippi River delta's current form is taken from overlapping cycles of delta formation stemming from the river’s shifting its outlet into the Gulf of Mexico through cycles of sedimentation lasting approximately 1000 years. As the silt from annual floods choked the main Mississippi channel, distributor channels would reroute flow distributing land building silt to new regions. These cycles of overlapping deposition, along with the gradual erosion that occurs once flow has shifted, are what give the region its shape today.
