Roadside
Our perception of landscape is affected by how we move through it. Much of my work begins with movement - a journey. And with each voyage, the mode of travel becomes a vital element in the way I see and remember my surroundings. Using a range of tools from pinhole cameras to digital video, I employ both the still and the moving image to record, document, and re-explore these views, and to reproduce and describe the ephemeral quality of moving through a landscape. This body of work began with a month-long solo road trip of more than 7,000 miles. I tasked myself with traveling through parts of the United States I had never seen, and on roads I had not yet taken. Driving alone with no set route, watching the never-ending horizon, I was free to exist in the moment, to experience the space around me, and to anticipate the unknown just out of view. Primarily using a pinhole camera, I photographed from the roadside – scenic vistas, tourist spots, and miles of empty landscape. This most rudimentary of cameras, merely a box with a pinhole opening, it is perfect in its simplicity, and creates an image in which chance and imperfection, and a certain lack of control, are inherent - very much like the magic, the allure, and the exhilaration of the open road.