Indepth from Turley Gallery

With this series of photographic work, I've continued to trace the passage of cosmic dust and rock through time and space, considering how these ubiquitous substances and inane pieces of the planet have been responsible for forming life on Earth; The impact that simple atmospheric debris has had on the evolution of human beings.

The moon’s surface is riddled with craters ranging in size and structural complexity, and billions of years ago before life emerged, the Earth looked the same way. Everything that happened on the moon happened on the Earth.

Following the motion and metamorphosis of rock during the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event (the sudden mass extinction of three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth) I re-imagined the impact of dust and cloud on the Earth's surface as a result of the cratering that occurred.

The "excavation phase" as it's called, during an impact, is when a massive shock wave causes the projectile to simultaneously melt and vaporize, spewing plumes of searing hot rock vapor miles high into the atmosphere. The force can catapult chunks of molten and solid rock hundreds of miles from the impact site. It can block out the sun.

In thinking about these bits of dust and rock in the sky, it's no exaggeration to say that without the K-Pg extinction cause by that crater impact, human beings probably never would have evolved. You might not be able to see it with the naked eye, but our very existence is a testament to the blast's long-ranging effects. From the ashes of disaster, life.