Once the Ocean Floor

Haines Gallery is pleased to present Once the Ocean Floor, a group exhibition of photography featuring works by John Chiara, Linda Connor, David Maisel, and Meghann Riepenhoff. Working across a range of photographic processes, these artists foreground the natural world not simply as subject, but as an active force — an agent, collaborator, and historian. The Opening Reception takes place on Friday, May 8, 2026 from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM. Press Release (PDF) John Chiara Hutcheson Ferry Road at Selborne Lane, South of Atlanta, Georgia, 2025 Camera Obscura Ilfochrome Photograph, Unique 16.25 x 14.25 inches, framed Inquire Linda Connor Once The Ocean Floor, Series #90, Ladakh, India, 2013 Sublimation on Aluminum, printed 2018 30 x 24 inches Edition 3 of 10 Inquire Once the Ocean Floor includes a suite of new prints made during Chiara's 2025 artist residency in Georgia, capturing wooded meadows and drifting clouds. Printed directly onto photographic paper using hand-built camera obscuras, his images possess an uncanny clarity — at once dreamlike and sharply lucid. Connor's eponymous series depicting the exquisitely craggy rock faces of Ladakh, India — Himalayan terrain that lay submerged beneath an ancient ocean more than 100 million years ago — and related works reflect a long-term engagement with the elemental forces of spirit and nature that continuously reshape our world. David Maisel Spiraling 6, 2024 Archival Pigment Print 32.5 x 42.5 inches, framed Edition 1 of 6 + 2 AP Inquire Meghann Riepenhoff Day 391.11: mushroom spore ink + organic and inorganic pigment + Prussian Blue pigment + waves + freezing flung water + chanting, 2025 2 Unique Dynamic Cyanotypes 46 x 64 inches, framed Inquire Maisel’s Spiraling series offers an aerial perspective on the environmental crisis rapidly unfolding across the Great Salt Lake region. Through his lens, endangered landscapes are imbued with a disquieting allure. Created directly within the landscape, Riepenhoff's State Shift cyanotypes underscore nature’s force as an agent of transformation, while inviting us to consider the personal and collective shifts needed to preserve our shared home. Together, the artists in this exhibition propose a reorientation of photographic practice — one in which authorship is shared with and inspired by the natural world. Across these works, the earth is not merely represented, but an active participant. In this sense, photography becomes less a tool of depiction than a site of encounter, where the forces of nature, human intervention, and material processes converge.