Homelands, 2006
Often the house in my photographs serves as a visual metaphor for the body, while protecting the faces of the people who live inside. These images bear witness to the places I have visited and some of the people I have met while visiting brown fields, EPA sites, strip mines, and poisoned communities throughout the USA. In these photographs I chose to hinder the horizon with man-made power lines, containment systems, smokestacks, power plants, and refineries. Visually obstructing and flattening the horizon helps to provoke a sense of unease or quiet sickness.
The repeated empty space of dead grass, pavement, or field in the photographs visually helps to disconnect the eye while pulling back from the center evoking a feeling of abandonment. This series helps to identify the similarities interwoven between each town like a map connecting points on a road. I want to make the connection between each photograph, to have a sense that each town is not isolated but is part of a very real and shared human experience related to our own environment and the more critical eye that may be turned toward it.