The Stratigraphy of Our Time

The section “Layers of the Present” brings the thematic journey of Archaeologies of the Anthropocene: Fragments of a Wounded Planet to a close. Composed of photographic strata with embedded residues, this body of work establishes the project’s fundamental perspective: documenting the human trace as a geological layer.

The Landscape as Archive

The origin of this exploration lies in a walk along the coast of Gran Canaria, where land cracked by erosion revealed sedimented layers in which nature and human residue coexisted in unsettling proximity. The landscape ceased to be a mere setting and became an archive.

The photographs capture the texture of the terrain and the details that compose it, presenting them as archaeological cuts. These sections do not simply expose the surface; they visually penetrate recent history, operating as an archaeology of the present. The aim is to excavate the surface of the everyday in order to make visible what usually remains concealed.

The Integrated Trace

What emerges within these layers is the active coexistence of the remains of our civilisation embedded in the environment. Between sand and stone appear materials that neither dissolve nor biologically integrate: melted plastics, oxidised metals, fossil-like textiles and unrecognisable fragments.

Each documented stratum becomes a contemporary stratigraphy in which every buried object carries a silent narrative. These images move beyond the mere recording of waste; they capture the transformation of matter itself: ropes resemble roots, residues evoke scenes of scientific excavation.

The Fossil of the Anthropocene

The concept of “Layers of the Present” functions as a powerful visual metaphor for the Anthropocene. The term designates the current geological era, defined by the human imprint upon the planet. The oceans, the atmosphere and the Earth itself already preserve our signature: a layer of plastic waste, metals, concrete and radioactive ash that will constitute the fossil of the future.

The project centres on the persistence of residue as an anthropogenic marker, suggesting that the metabolic rupture with nature begins when human waste resists natural integration. By photographing these strata, the work proposes an attentive observation of sedimented residue — matter slowly absorbed by its surroundings and transformed into vestige.

A series of twelve A3 photographs printed on aluminium stand as tangible evidence that everything shown here was found. They are fragments of a time that has not yet concluded, traces of our own species before disappearance. This visual archaeology of the present reminds us that this is not an archaeology of the past, but of a present in the process of decay.

In Summary

If we imagine the history of the planet as a book whose pages are layers of sediment, “Layers of the Present” represents the pages we are writing now. The ink of this writing is not biodegradable; it is composed of the plastics and metals we have discarded, forming a permanent record that will be read by future generations — or perhaps by the geologists of tomorrow — as irrefutable evidence of our existence and our impact.