nika mckagen

Caves + forests are ancient not only in terms of shelter but also of story: in many mythos, the antechamber to the underworld presents itself either in a cave or deep in the forest. These spaces demolish the thin connective tissue dividing the natural world from the supernatural world. Intentional exploration of the subterranean world unavoidably creates explorations into the subconscious. Veils thin and potentials for magic appear, letting us get closer to desire, grief, and divinity.

This project (in-progress) documents the caves of Southwestern Virginia, in the Appalachian mountains - caves that my late father mapped out and I explored frequently when I was a child. Like Aeneas descending to speak to his father’s spirit, I am descending into significant cave systems in order to confront sublimity and grief. These documentations are transformed into photographic objects and collages of visceral textures, obscured ghosts, and portals into other realms.

I work using medium format cameras and silver gelatin photographic printing: processes that allow for meaning to become embedded in the work through the photograph’s hedonistic relationships to light, chemical, and touch. Working in the darkroom is an emulation of being inside a cave - it’s dark, wet, reddened, erupting with tactile and auditory sensations, and tends to produce some kind of holy imagery. This work is produced by printing on different sizes and types of expired silver gelatin paper from the 50’s-80’s from the US and the USSR, the two cultures in which I was raised. The paper has been scarred by light over the course of its lifetime, making the imagery that etches into it reflect the dim conditions of the underworld. These photographs act as evidence of mythic, poetic, or subconscious spaces.