The last century has been a golden age of water: a world where you can consistently turn on the tap and find clean, fresh water coming out in any Western city. With global climate change, this expectation is becoming less certain. Droughts, contamination, and flooding in places like Los Angeles, Flint, Cape Town and many Indigenous populations have pushed our ability to receive water to the limit.

Dark Waters is a series of images of water and clouds looking at our hand in commodifying and altering nature. Using a laser cutter, Van Der Hout burns holes into photographs and mirrors, allowing certain portions of the image to remain and others to fall away -- exploring his interest in the process of creation through destruction. The destruction of the photographs becomes a metaphor for our incursions into nature. The incursions into the photograph feel natural and organic in some places and repetitive and mechanical in others, mirroring the tension between the seemingly natural and the manufactured landscape.