Binary Codex | The Habitat

For anyone who has traveled much of the river, Berman’s photographs are like family snapshots: many scenes are familiar, some are distressing, some look like accidents, and so many are nearly forgotten or almost missed. The series, printed in carbon pigment on three tall sheets of kozo washi […], follows the Rio Grande from the Gulf to the headwaters. I squint to read the no trespassing signs, see the yucca, the lonely old cottonwood. A pair of mannequin legs hangs near an abandoned bag of clothing. There are shots of the border wall, blocking the migration of land-bound animals. In one photo, a notice of sea turtle nesting foregrounds a fenced lot full of semi-trucks. The ordering of the photos suggests a timeline, but then again, there is looping, fluctuation. I take it in in bits and pieces. I am part of this fragmentation.

Briana Olson, from Review: Species in Peril Along the Rio Grande, Southwest Contemporary

Composed from hundreds of images spanning the length and breadth of the Rio Grande, these precisely spaced fragments, encode a lament and an exhortation.