Introducing: Ingrid Weyland
Foster/White Gallery is delighted to add Ingrid Weyland to our roster of artists and currently have a selection of her works on display in the gallery. Weyland's photography-based practice highlights the beauty and wonder of the natural world while drawing attention to its fragility. We asked Ingrid to tell us a little bit about her artistic process, the locations she shoots, as well as the inspiration and motivation behind her practice.
Ingrid Weyland
My process begins with an emotional response to the landscape before my eyes. I’m drawn to places that feel untouched, often remote, where one can experience a sense of vulnerability and awe in equal measure. I begin by photographing these landscapes in a traditional way, but the work truly evolves in the studio, where I intervene in the materiality of the photographic print itself. I manipulate and distort the photographic print, crumpling, twisting, and reshaping, using these gestures as metaphors for human impact on nature. The process becomes performative, almost sculptural. What may begin as a pristine, idealized image is later revealed as fragile, altered, and marked. This tension between beauty and damage is central to my work.
Topographies of Fragility XXXII, archival pigment print, available in 18 x 27.5 and 26 x 39.4 inches
Initially, I was drawn to photography as a way of preserving memory, not just what I saw, but how I felt in a specific time and place. I found something magical in the idea that a still photograph could later speak to you, rekindling sensations and emotions that might otherwise fade. It was a way to hold onto fleeting experiences, to remain connected to moments of personal meaning. Coming from a background in graphic design, I was already drawn to form and composition, but photography brought something more intimate and expansive. Over time, it stopped being just a means of remembering and became a way of processing, of understanding and navigating my inner world. I’ve come to see that, when you allow yourself to create from a place of emotional honesty, your work inevitably carries the imprint of your lived experience. Photography became not only a vessel for memory but a quiet act of healing, a way to transform feeling into form.
Topographies of Fragility XXV, archival pigment print, available in 22 x 47.2 and 24 x 51 inches
I have always felt the need to travel, to escape and reconnect, to find spaces where I could be fully present. Remote and seemingly untouched landscapes became a personal sanctuary, places where I could experience emotional stillness and introspection. I’ve photographed from Cape Horn to the Arctic, and those experiences have shaped not only my work but my connection to the land, to rhythm, and to being alone in nature. They also deepened my awareness of how essential nature is to all of us, that we are not separate from it, but intrinsically part of it. That realization has made me value it more deeply, as something we must care for and remain connected to.
Topographies of Fragility XXI, archival pigment print, available in 26.2 x 46.8 inches
Even though I’ve always loved Argentina, I felt an urge to travel as far away as possible, seeking out distant and unfamiliar places. But over time, I began to see my own country differently. I learned to appreciate and value its unique diversity, and especially the vastness of its territory, where we can still find unspoiled, lesser-known landscapes.
That realization deepened not just my connection to the land, but also my desire to work with it, to understand and honor it through my practice. I’ve seen how the landscape changes, slowly in some places, dramatically in others. Last summer, I witnessed firsthand man-provoked wildfires in the Nahuel Huapi region, in Patagonia, while accompanying local firemen. The urgency of these environmental issues had long been present in my mind, but standing in the smoke and silence of a burning landscape gave that urgency a new depth. That experience strengthened my commitment to speak through my work of nature’s fragility, and of our shared responsibility to protect it. When I walk through a forest or stand at the edge of a glacier, I’m not just seeing beauty, I’m sensing its impermanence. That awareness shapes both my art and my way of being in the world.
Topographies of Fragility XXXVI, archival pigment print, available in 26.25 x 39.4 and 34 x 51 inches
When faced with the majesty of nature, I often feel overwhelmed, moved by something vast, silent, and beyond words. There’s an emotional intensity in those moments that grounds me. I breathe deeply, take in the scents and textures of the place, and slowly enter a kind of quiet trance. I like to be alone and in silence, it allows me to truly connect. Nature never stops surprising me. Even in places I know well, it reveals something new, a subtle shift in light, a different rhythm in the wind. That sense of discovery keeps me open, alert, humble.
I rarely photograph immediately. I walk, I watch, I wait. I let the place settle into me before I lift the camera. When I do, I’m not just composing an image, I’m trying to hold a moment of connection, to preserve the atmosphere, the feeling, the pause. What I seek is not just a picture, but a trace of stillness, a quiet mood, a pause long enough for contemplation. For me, photography begins in silence, and if I’m lucky, the image carries a little of that silence with it.
Topographies of Fragility XXVI, archival pigment print, available in 18 x 27.5, 26 x 39.4, and 34 x 51 inches
I see my work as part of a conversation about our relationship with nature. My photographs aim to provoke a pause, a visual and emotional impact that invites the viewer to look again, and to consider the traces we leave behind on the Earth. Art can be a powerful advocate, it can speak directly to emotion, sparking reflection where facts alone may not. Since I began working on this series, I’ve been deeply moved by responses from viewers who’ve told me the images stayed with them, made them stop and think. A couple of professors have reported saying that they were inspired after seeing my work to put this method into practice in their classes: asking students to crumple a sheet of paper and try to smooth it out again, a simple but tangible metaphor for irreversible change. Those conversations, born from an image, are the kind of echoes I never expected, but which give me hope. I believe artists have the capacity to plant a seed that can quietly take root and grow into awareness, empathy, and maybe even action. If my work contributes to that, even in the smallest way, then I feel I’ve done something meaningful.