Silent Witness is a photographic experiment in material memory, created by embedding two 3x4 inch films into soil during the duration of a single interview. Acting as sensory extensions of the landscape, the films recorded the unseen biophysical and chemical processes of the soil itself. Developed in opposing colors on the color wheel and later combined into a single composite, the resulting image materializes a dialogue—one between decomposition and emergence, absence and presence, earth and human.

Inspired by Susan Schuppli’s concept of material witness, this work challenges the idea of soil as passive matter, instead framing it as an active recorder of environmental histories. By allowing the soil to imprint its own mark on the film, Soil’s Silent Witness reveals a silent yet dynamic conversation occurring beneath our feet—one that exists beyond human perception yet shapes the very foundation of life.

This piece invites viewers to consider the soil not just as a resource but as a storyteller, an archive of ecological, political, and material entanglements. Through this process-driven approach, the work transforms photography from an act of representation into an act of listening—one that foregrounds the agency of the earth itself.