Through four years of living in the shadow of Sun Mountain (Tava-Kavvi) on ancestral Nuuchiu (Ute) lands in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, artist Quinn Jacobson confronts humanity's deepest psychological armor: our denial of death.
Using historical photographic processes and contemporary painting, he excavates the hidden forces behind cultural violence, erasure, and our desperate attempts at immortality.
Internationally renowned for reviving 19th-century wet plate collodion techniques, Jacobson merges this haunting medium with terror management theory and the writings of Ernest Becker to explore how death anxiety shapes human behavior.
Through his intimate collaboration with the mountain's landscapes, sacred plants, and symbols, he reveals both the wounds of colonization and possibilities for healing through artistic creation.
In the Shadow of Sun Mountain is a raw meditation on mortality, creativity, and the stories we tell ourselves to keep darkness at bay.
More than an artist's memoir, it is an invitation to confront the universal truth that shapes every human life: our shared impermanence.