Memorial Day

One of the shots made in Muscoda yesterday,filtered through all that this day of remembering the ultimate cost of conflict represents in America.
My “photomod” post-processing actualizes the implicit tangle of emotion, layering visual moods directly over the image, rather than make any attempt at an objective presentation. The image becomes as freighted with interpretation as is our culture of ideals bruised by the realities of our actions and history. And our determination to get back up and move forward, unbroken.

Land of the Free

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What is it

Under the influence of the 1980’s book New Topographics…phone camera no editing

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New Topographics, Revisted

After reading Rebecca Solnit’s Unfathomable City and Wanderlust these past few weeks my attention’s been re-focused on the history of landscape as cultural narrative and on human modified landscapes a reflection of our cultural values. Or the dis/integration thereof. The 1975 photography exhibition “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” came to my attention this morning and I’ve since been web diving for information about the individual photographers who participated in this re-en/visioning of the traditional narratives of vast, wild, sublime American landscape. Their post-industrial, post-suburban, interstate sliced still lives of the land made subservient to human whim resonate deeply within my own assessment of what has changed everywhere we live in the past 50 years.

Frank Gohlke’s work should be known by anyone interested in contemporary interpretations of landscape. The following interview and retrospective slide show of the images he considers most significant nicely summarized his vision and intentions:

http://www.terrain.org/interview/28/

here today I’m editing & printing cityscapes and trying to design a promo postcard for the April show. Never was I much good at making choices and there are a lot of them to wade through, which photo, what dimensions, what to say, how much. learning as I go!  Thanks for stopping by the Driftless World.

Hall Street, Brooklyn New York October, 2013

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Text Me Tonight

No teenager ever grew up near the boardwalk without a summer night like this: illuminated dreamscape, coasters rattling, crowd chatter, sweet stink of cotton candy and corndogs all around, barkers hollering for a mark, all the while hunkered down in some dark retreat you call or wait for a friend, a smile, a sparking coincidence to lift you up and whirl you into the surrounding , pulsating crowd, instantly alive, electric, no longer alone.

Every kid who grew up at the shore can see themselves here for a moment, on a hot summer night, waiting for the next best thing

 

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