A few weekends ago I visited Leyden and Montague, way up on the Vermont border in West-Central Mass. Turner’s Falls (in Montague) seems an unlikely place for a photography school and an even more unlikely place for an aspiring photography museum, but it has both.
After talking to Lisa and a few other people and reviewing a bunch of my images, I realize that in the Commonwealth project I am exploring (primarily) how humans are situated and interact with the natural environment, particular with respect to development, habitation, and land use. This idea provides a convenient way of tying in the Signs of Nature and High Tension series and also points to some possible ways of organizing the material.
I’m also trying to put evidence of ongoing human interactions into the project to take the edge off the whole post-Apocalyptic, human ruins feel that it — and a lot of contemporary deadpan landscape photography — seems to have.
I don’t mean to be cruel, but if a photography school wants to publicize its “success stories”, it might be a good idea to make sure the case study portraits can’t be confused with the output of the local Glamour Shots.
Oh, snap!