shashasha

For “In The Vicinity”, Ed Panar photographed a region with the Emerald Triangle, the heart of California’s cannabis culture. In muted, unpeopled photographs, Panar draws out the diverse landscape and the grand beauty of its idyllic nature but also pencils in the complex reality brought about by the multi-billion dollar cannabis industry that thrived in the gray shadow years before the legalization in 2016: shots of trees rising against majestic mountains, fields still asleep under the cover of morning mist, orange flower beds accentuating green meadows, and then a picture of a bullet-riddled car wreck. The driving force of it all, the cannabis plant itself, remains mystically absent in the photographs (safe for the small booklet titled “Flowers” included in the back of the book).
Panar’s book of ambient photography creates a relaxing yet inquisitive atmosphere, where the reader feels engaged while keeping a certain distance.

“The quiet clarity of Panar’s photographs—landscape, still life, details and the occasional nonhuman observer— provide an open ended invitation to consider not only an area within and along the edges of this industry, but also the gray areas of photographic representation and its ability to provide ‘documentary’ insight into something as elusive and enigmatic as the allure of this mythical plant and the emerging modern cannabis economy.”
― from the publisher’s description