Missouri river: chamberlain

by Ethan Jones

Missouri River: Chamberlain is part of Ethan Jones’s series An Unsearchable Distance. The larger project is inspired by the numerous failed searches for the Northwest Passage—a sea route from the Atlantic to Pacific Oceans around the northern rim of the American continent. For several centuries it was assumed the elusive passage was only just out of reach, beyond the rapids and seas of ice. Today, the long sought-after passage has opened up due to the destructive melting of polar ice over the top of North America. Jones sees the search for the Northwest Passage as a symbol of “a human desire to impose our will on something much larger than ourselves, without concern for results or its effects.” For this series, Jones seeks to capture images where the landscape appears malleable, under our influence, and in the midst of ongoing change. But in each image, there is an underlying sense of an ominous change, of plans gone awry, and the potential for destruction.