Winter 2025 Cycle – Photography
Lubbock, Texas  joshuamokry.com

Winter 2025 Cycle – Photography
Lubbock, Texas  joshuamokry.com

This body of work currently spans twelve different cave systems in the regions of New Mexico and Texas where I have been working as a cave restorationist. The objectives of these trips are to restore parts of a cave that have been polluted and trashed, repair formations that have been broken, conduct cave surveys, and catalog cave life. Serving as both photographer and restorationist, I am constantly thinking about these niche parts of the Earth, and how far human interference can extend itself. I further question the importance of this restoration, and how both destruction and restoration privileges human vision over nonhuman habitation. Human influence on our environment has seeped below our awareness. Through photography, sculpture, installation, performance, and sound, I explore the breakdown of the human hierarchy, bringing us below to hear, feel, and think of an environment where darkness can rest. In this work, let us think below ourselves - on the quiet places, the caverns, and the crevices. A cave is a place to listen. The low hum of the Earth heard within these spaces is an imperceptible force, just as the weight of our choices can feel minor and unobtrusive. Caves are time capsules, and remnants of our visitation can reverb into the future. I aim to go beyond the human enterprise and venture into a nonhuman realm, re-orienting to a perspective that operates in an alternate reality from our own. Placing my body below the Earth, I bring myself below to raise up things not heard, felt, or thought about. I reckon with forces that move on a different time scale from our own but are nevertheless moving whether we perceive it or not. Caves are measured, inspected, and treated as evidence for us to exploit. It is in these places where human perturbation extends itself. I am at the mercy of the rocks, the objects, and the shadows. I am no different than these. I focus on these nonhuman spaces to challenge our hierarchy and put us below the horizon line.

This body of work currently spans twelve different cave systems in the regions of New Mexico and Texas where I have been working as a cave restorationist. The objectives of these trips are to restore parts of a cave that have been polluted and trashed, repair formations that have been broken, conduct cave surveys, and catalog cave life. Serving as both photographer and restorationist, I am constantly thinking about these niche parts of the Earth, and how far human interference can extend itself. I further question the importance of this restoration, and how both destruction and restoration privileges human vision over nonhuman habitation. Human influence on our environment has seeped below our awareness. Through photography, sculpture, installation, performance, and sound, I explore the breakdown of the human hierarchy, bringing us below to hear, feel, and think of an environment where darkness can rest. In this work, let us think below ourselves - on the quiet places, the caverns, and the crevices. A cave is a place to listen. The low hum of the Earth heard within these spaces is an imperceptible force, just as the weight of our choices can feel minor and unobtrusive. Caves are time capsules, and remnants of our visitation can reverb into the future. I aim to go beyond the human enterprise and venture into a nonhuman realm, re-orienting to a perspective that operates in an alternate reality from our own. Placing my body below the Earth, I bring myself below to raise up things not heard, felt, or thought about. I reckon with forces that move on a different time scale from our own but are nevertheless moving whether we perceive it or not. Caves are measured, inspected, and treated as evidence for us to exploit. It is in these places where human perturbation extends itself. I am at the mercy of the rocks, the objects, and the shadows. I am no different than these. I focus on these nonhuman spaces to challenge our hierarchy and put us below the horizon line.