The Unmapped Margin

We often mistake the wild for a place devoid of human imprint, a pristine void waiting for our arrival. Yet, every landscape is a document of power, ownership, and exclusion. We draw lines on maps to decide where the city ends and the ‘untouched’ begins, ignoring that these boundaries are merely social constructs designed to manage resources and dictate who is permitted to witness beauty. When we look at a place supposedly removed from the urban grid, we must ask who curated this view and who was kept outside the fence to maintain the illusion of wilderness. The geography of a place is never just its physical features; it is the history of how we have categorized the earth into zones of consumption and zones of protection. We are always standing on ground that has been claimed, fenced, or forgotten by someone else. If we strip away the romanticism of the landscape, what remains of the people who were displaced to make this space a spectacle for the rest of us?

Fabrizio Bues has taken this beautiful image titled Hypnotic Water. It invites us to look past the surface of the natural world and consider the complex layers of our relationship with the land. What do you see when you look at the boundaries we draw around the wild?