Jaclyn Wright, Associate Professor of Photography & Digital Imaging, is the winner of the inaugural Unseen – GOST Books Publishing Award for ‘High Visibility (Blaze Orange)’. Her project uses debris collected from improvised gun ranges on public lands in Utah’s West Desert to create photographic installations exploring the intersections of photography, capitalism, and settler colonialism. Through the use of original images and archival photographs, maps, and diagrams, the work investigates the supporting role photography plays in the reification of nature, a process that codifies the criteria for land use based on sex, race, and class. The work probes the dialectics of America's social and political landscape by employing symbolism that engages with the natural/anthropogenic, visible/invisible, material/bureaucratic, prudent/reckless, sustainable/nihilistic.

The Unseen – GOST Books Publishing Award aims to foster photographic work through the production of a photo book. The winner will receive a photo book designed, edited, printed and published by Unseen/ GOST imprint, including distribution, press and promotion. Wright's book was selected from 353 entrants from 40 countries, and will be released internationally at Unseen Amsterdam (Netherlands) in fall 2023.

Wright will also present this body of work at the National Society for Photographic Education conference in March.