Tomiko Jones's place-based photographic practice is deeply rooted in explorations of the natural world and the ways in which people engage with it. She is interested the American construct of public land as "our land" -- as our rightful heritage and collective property. Given the role photography has historically played in reinforcing nation-building narratives, her chosen medium is particularly fitting.  

These Grand Places is a multi-year project that Jones began in 2017, during Donald Trump's first presidential term, when he signed proclamations that removed protections from more than 2 million acres of national monument land, which opened up previously protected areas to potential drilling, mining and logging. Prompted by these policies, Jones, over the next several years, traveled to many of the sites under federal review to gather visual and verbal material.

During her immersive residencies, Jones documented environmental degradation and beauty, political interventions in the landscape, and her own interactions with the land and its human and non-human inhabitants. As an artist of multiracial identity, she is attuned to considering who is (and has been) welcomed into or excluded from these "shared" spaces, and whose responsibility it is to protect them from the damaging effects of deregulation, human activity, and the ongoing climate crisis. The resulting interplay of photography, written impressions, and collected ephemera offers a poignant meditation on the politics of public land and its impact on notions of national belonging.