Refracted Landscape focuses on the camera lens as a media object refined from silica to consider how visual media is invisibly linked to the consumption of earth elements and the inherent violence associated with exploiting earth resources. Illegal sand extraction is a global phenomenon exacerbated by global demands, capitalist expansionism and chains of corruption, leading to the catastrophic dredging of the ocean floor. We consume rare earth minerals, extracted metals and materials such as sand in every aspect of our lives. By looking at the camera lens as a media technology equally derived and refined from the earth, I unfold the process that created it by using the handmade lens to photograph the Sunderland coast and the Sunderland Glass Centre. This area thrived off the spoils of the empire with an abundance of cheap imported coal and sand in the 18th century.

Creating my own glass lens links the media object to the geological time embodied in its material origin and mediates the environment to create a unique set of photographic images. Time is of crucial concern here - the camera shutter speed, the geological time of the furnace of the earth, and the industrial time the material has passed through from extraction to refinement. These images were taken on the Sunderland coast and in Sunderland Glass Centre, an area that thrived off the spoils of the empire with an abundance of cheap imported coal and sand in the 18th century.

The three hand-made glass lenses are modelled on the 1893 Cooke-triplet lens, comprised of one concave lens between two convex lenses. A 3D-printed barrel holds the glass and screws onto a contemporary digital camera, ensuring a light-tight connection. The irregular refraction of light recorded on the DSLR mirror is simultaneously the glass of the mirror and the glass of the lens, capturing light and colour through the hand-made lens’s organic impurities. The images captured appear weightless but are filtered and refracted by media objects derived from the earth.