Inspired by Southern California’s geology, the photographs made in this project are of earthquake epicentres, fault lines and people who live in and around the seismically active landscape of this part of the world. On a daily basis, hundreds of earthquake tremors can, and frequently do, take place there and the fact that the rate of land movement along the San Andreas Fault is said to be thirty - three millimetres each year - which is about as fast as our fingernails grow - only serves to feed the imagination of what it must be like to live in Southern California. (As a result of this movement, Los Angeles City Hall is now said to be 2.7 metres closer to San Francisco than when it was built in 1924.) This restless place challenges imaginations because it is filled with seismic uncertainty…Terra Incognita acknowledges the connection between the shifting topography of the land and the experience of living in constant uncertainty. Through these photographs of both the land and the people, a story of modern life pursued on this unsettled and shifting edge of a continent is told.

In the spirit of the project’s title, fault lines, seismicity and human perceptions are reminders of our fragility and the limitations of knowledge. There will always be terra incognita.

Samples from three sections of the project are shown below:

• Earthquake Epicentres

• Portraits: ‘Settlers in an Unsettled Land’ [text not included]

• Fieldwork

(2008-2012, PhD awarded project).  A short video of the exhibition at UCD Research Building can be viewed here.