Andrew Beckham "Ghost Flowers: Big Rooted Spring Beauty at Taylor Glacier CO"

Hi, I’m Andrew Beckham.

There are an abundance of high altitude, alpine flowers that grow along the rarefied streams issuing from cirque glaciers along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. These last remaining glaciers, along with their neighboring Permanent Snowfields, are becoming less and less permanent every year. As the glaciers decline, the larger ecosystems that they support face systemic impacts in the years ahead.

This work imagines a time when these alpine flowers are held only in memory, ghosts of a bygone era. Drawn on carbon inkjet prints over large granite walls and monoliths with white chalk, these glacial sites become imagined memorials, places where we can honor such fragile beauty only through remembrance.

Today these glaciers and flowers, and the web of life they support, are still with us. What we choose to do over the coming decades will determine whether or not those who come after us will be able to experience these astonishing places as we do.