Treasure Valley, Idaho is a documentary landscape photography project, which seeks to document the destruction of productive farmland, as well as the destruction of the natural environment local to Idaho. With this project I seek to document the topography of these environments as it is replaced by housing developments, industrial complexes, and other human-made structures.
I moved to a rather peaceful rural area of the Treasure Valley in 2013. When I first moved to Idaho from Alaska it was a drastic change. At that time, I moved into an area that has seen little growth in over 20 years. Recently, however, Treasure Valley has started to experience a major population increase as technology companies and other industry members increase their presence in the areas. With the population increase, development of housing tracts, industrial complexes, shopping malls, and other human-built structures are replacing undeveloped and agricultural lands, often paying no heed to environmental preservation.
Much of the land in the Treasure Valley contains fertile farmland surrounded by undeveloped natural environments that are home to a diverse range of wildlife and flora/fauna. These natural environments, as well as all they contain, are essential for keeping the land healthy, reducing pollution, and providing healthy food for humans. With an expected increase of three hundred thousand new residents in the next 20 years to this area, much of the agricultural and currently undeveloped lands will be destroyed and replaced with fast developments that use clear-cutting as their primary means to cut production costs and increase profits.
Development of human-made spaces will displace wildlife, kill trees, ground fauna, flora, and as a result, will have a massive negative effect on the streams and groundwater quality as there will be no essential plants that keep everything healthy within the environment after it has been destroyed. As I witness more development taking place, I ask: “What does the future of humankind and our planet hold if we continue to destroy the essential natural environments that keep our ecosystems healthy and reduce the negative effects of a rapidly increasing environmental changes?”
