Roadside Sublime |
This series of photographs explores the liminal or in-between spaces in the landscape and how those spaces represent a commodified nature of society. The in-between exists in a couple forms of waste landscapes or drosscapes including wasted spaces; empty dirt lots, abandoned buildings, and ruins. Wasteful spaces; vast expanses of parking lots and voided land for separating areas. Actual waste; consumption, construction, and the expanding reach of sprawl. The photographs are represented in a way to relate to the sublime paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, JMW Turner, Thomas Cole and the Hudson River Painters with powerful skies, high vantage points and processional views to infinity that are meant to give a sense of awe and a sense of terror and delight. The photographs represent the duality of a beautiful wasteland and lay in the middle of reality and the surreal. They point out the cultural implications of a beautiful landscape becoming industrialized through subtle absurd juxtapositions and nostalgic lighting. The photographs reflect an existential duality that shows the absurdity of our own surroundings. Liminal spaces show the free will of man to commodify and sectionalize the landscape in to little units separated by roads on a large grid imposed on a domesticated natural environment. It represents how man gives meaning to the world and how nothing is ordained by divine will in a godless but beautiful landscape.
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