Pseudo Night embodies the meditative, suspended sense of being I have experienced while solo hiking in the wilderness, a co-existing state of both representation and sublimation. These seemingly nightscape trail images are constructed reflections from long distance hiking trips and are meant to mimic the night thought I photograph during the day. In making these I thought of how old western films produced night scenes during the day, and I played with traditional troupes such as the Rückenfigur or presence through absence. These photographs are both cautionary and inviting, a palpable energy found at the edge of the woods.

Meg Roussos, b.1990 and raised in Southern Ohio and has lived in Seattle, WA since 2020. Roussos was recently an artist-in-residence at MJR Projects in Bainbridge Island, WA (2021), Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, CO, (2021) and will take part in The Arctic Circle Residency expedition in 2024.

Meg Roussos’ photo-based art practice investigates what it means to physically experience the landscape. Cultivated from 10 years spent exploring the wilderness – she has hiked over 8,000 miles and completed three major U.S. long distance hiking trails – her work queries the landscape and her place within it. Roussos uses photography in the traditional sense to yield a picture, and also as a means to document her site-responsive installations and performances. Her work readily blurs documentation with fantasy and allows for a playful humor amidst the exigencies wrought by climate change. While excavating the contradictions in our mediated experience of nature, Roussos maintains a deeply romantic belief in our spiritual connection with the natural environment and the possibility for beauty and hope to prevail.