DILLON BRYANT, BLACK HILLS
“My practice explores constructions of home, desire, family mythologies, and the landscape in relation to the LGBT+ experience through collage and photography. Taken and found images sourced from family albums, maps, guide books, magazines, and other archives are reorientated to examine the legacies of western expansion and mining in the American West with focus on sites in South Dakota (SD) and California. Collage deconstructs and queers the arranged scenes of found images and assembling pieces by hand references the labor of space building. The consciously constructed nature of these collages and images calls attention to the photograph as an arranged object.
The Black Hills of SD and the Colorado Desert, are contentious spaces. The Black Hills are an occupied landscape that have been embroiled in land sovereignty issues before prospectors discovered gold in the region’s gulches in the 19th century. They are the traditional and sacred lands of the Cheyenne, Kiowa, Arapaho, Crow, Arikara, Pawnee, and the Oceti Sakowin peoples. California’s Colorado Desert is the homelands of the Cahuilla, Gabrielino, Serrano, Luise-o, Chemehuevi, and the Mojavi that were similarly displaced due to settler expansion. The pursuit of mineral resources has shaped popular conceptions of the American West.” - Lenscratch