OPEN ECO: Jeremy Dennis, Still Searching For Land We Can Both Call Home, from the series Rise (2025)

In this staged photograph from Rise, a Native figure carries a white woman through shoulder-deep water as she searches the horizon for land. Reversing colonial captivity narratives, the image questions who claims territory and whose displacement is overlooked. Read through sea-level rise threatening Shinnecock homelands, the search for a shared home becomes both urgent and ironic: Indigenous communities face environmental loss layered onto histories of dispossession. Photography makes these entangled pressures imaginable, asking viewers to connect climate responsibility with Indigenous sovereignty rather than repeat the fantasy of land awaiting discovery.

Jeremy Dennis is a Shinnecock artist and photographer based in Southampton, New York. His practice explores Indigenous identity, history, land, and belonging through staged photography and place-based research. His ongoing series Rise reimagines colonial narratives through theatrical encounters that use humor, tension, and historical reference to envision Indigenous sovereignty. His On This Site project documents places significant to Indigenous Long Island history, connecting contemporary landscapes with the histories they hold.

United States
www.jeremynative.com
@jeremynative/