Category Archives: Commonwealth Project

Ever since my contemporary art presentation, I’ve received a surprising amount of positive feedback and probing questions. And I feel better about showing my work, knowing that I have prepared my audience. All of which has had the effect of improving my outlook on the camera club.

One consistently thoughtful club member took a look over these pages and posed the following query:

I’m interested in your series of signs of nature and have a question: you mention the work by Charlotte Cotton and her way of categorizing, and I wonder into which category (ies?) you would put your projects, both Commonwealth and the Signs one. Is it deadpan? Does it emphasize “thingness”?

Here is a bit of my response.

While I have considered similar questions a bit when writing artist’s statements and such, I increasingly find myself asking the following questions when I photograph: “What am I doing today? Is it consistent with what I’ve done earlier?” Having this rubric helps focus me a little, but I’ve only recently started thinking about what I want my photographs to say when I make them. Having better answers will help me make better images.

I suspect I used to treat my photographs as inkblots of my subconscious mind: “What does this place mean to me? What do I see?” I guess I’m still doing that, but now I try to integrate both the answers and the questions into my photographs instead of waiting to divine the answers on the lightbox. In a year or two, the questions and answers may be completely different. We’ll see.

Anyway. I haven’t made claims to objectivity in several years, so I don’t share that with the deadpan folks. Photographs frame “truth” and can at best only suggest something (perhaps purposefully false) to the viewer. Lately, while working on the “Commonwealth” series, the ethical and subjective component of this mode of photography — what I’ve been calling pseudo-documentary — has taken a primary place in my thinking, as I aim to ensure that I don’t misrepresent the people and places I photograph and as I think about my own relationship with the subjects of my work.

Still, in terms of aesthetics, I guess my work fits somewhere in the broad intersection of deadpan, still life (“thing-ness”), and
documentary or “aftermath” imagery. More and more of my images seem to rely on each other for their artistic and conceptual content and require the idea behind the series to pull its weight. “Signs of Nature” (hopefully) shows the pervasiveness of human interactions with nature and the top-down control of acceptable leisure pursuits; the nature-human nexus in Massachusetts is very tightly coupled, and the signs suggest we share a lot with our “blue law” ancestors who
mistrusted working class fun. I suspect these images lose much of their force when they’re viewed individually.

Similarly, the emerging theme of the “Commonwealth” series — what our built environment in this narrow sliver of America looks like and how we relate to our natural spaces and to each other — definitely has the largest set of influences: both recent deadpan folks (Thomas Struth and Stephen Shore), photographers who try to elevate the ordinary or distill its essence (the Bechers and Jeff Bruows), and the earlier photographers we all know (Ansel Adams, Margaret Bourke-White, Edward Weston, Walker Evans, etc.). It’s nice to be in a place where I’m refining my style instead of my technique; but when I think about the 351 images that will eventually make up this series, I still don’t know how I want them to look or feel.

At my presentation last week, which went very well thankyouverymuch, I started with some images by Alec Soth.

I really like Soth’s images, but when I look at his work I sense an ambiguous relationship between him and his subjects, as though he doesn’t truly respect the people he photographs. Or perhaps, like Diane Arbus, he identifies with them but doesn’t like himself. In his photographs, the American poor and working class — whether along the Mississippi, at Niagara Falls, or in their Bible study groups — come across as the “other.” Perhaps they retain a sense of mousey dignity, but there’s implicit judgment.

Soth likes to stare, so we could give him the benefit of the doubt; he could just be showing us (like Jacob Riis or Weegee) something we ourselves voyeuristically want to stare at.

Do I do the same thing? Does my sense of Midwestern propriety — although attenuated a lot over the last decade — create negative value judgments in my own work?

These questions occurred to me yesterday. My newest set of images (just back from the lab) pick at some of the common threads of my Commonwealth project: signage, post-industrial landscapes, suburban development, powerlines, and clutter. Often (but certainly not always) something is amiss, unexpected, or absurd. I think — I hope! — that my images are playful without being snobbish, that the judgments are gentle in the pseudo-documentary mode I occasionally employ.

Update 29 May 2009: Or perhaps my reactions to Soth say more about my own bourgeois feelings than his. . . .

From the Commonwealth series:

“Be American – Georgetown, Mass.” (2005)

“Dalton, Mass.” (2005)

“Buckland, Mass.” (2005)

From the new Signs of Nature series:

“No Parking – Douglas SF, Mass.” (2005)

“Parki – Douglas SF, Mass.” (2005)

“No Motorized Vehices – Douglas SF, Mass.” (2005)

“Gate 25 – Douglas SF, Mass.” (2005)

“Danger Unguarded Water Area. Alcohol Prohibited – Waconah SP, Mass.” (2005)

“Pole 20 – Waconah SP, Mass.” (2005)

Yesterday I left the house far earlier than ever before to photograph at sunrise with some camera club folks on one of the beaches of Plum Island.

I like the ocean, but I’ll confess to being a landlubber (photographically at least). So I headed back up the island, over the bridge, through Newburyport, and down Route 1A (which Gillian called “the slow road to nowhere”) to Rowley. There I drove some backroads and had a decent time photographing, eventually making my way to the town’s common. I wandered around, photographing some rebuilt antique tractors, talking to some locals, and enjoying the beautiful weather.

“Are you from the paper?” I brought my camera down from my eye to see four or five people about my age (or slightly older) looking at me, all wearing “Rowley Agrictultural Commission” badges. This has happened to me before and probably isn’t an unfamiliar experience for anyone who uses two camera bodies and has a camera bag slung over his or her shoulder.

“No. I’m just out working on a project.” Stares. “I’m photographing in all 351 towns and cities of Massachusetts.” This usually gets intriguing smiles and conversation.

“A collector’s set, huh?” asked the main ag guy (who didn’t look like any farmer I’d ever seen in Iowa or elsewhere).

Hmm . . . “Not exactly. It’s more of an art project.”

“Merit badge, eh?” Whatever. “Anyway, welcome to Rowley.” Yeah, thanks.

So now I have an ethics problem to work through before showing pictures from Rowley. If I could only show my favorite photograph from Rowley — supposing it turns out well, a double-exposure that shows the tremendous pressures suburban farmers face, with a farmer’s “going out of business sign” and the subdivision across the street from it — do I help out the dismissive Rowley ag man? Or would I spite him and show an antique tractor, making him seem quaint and out-of-touch?

It’s a moot discussion. Of course, I would show whichever one I liked better.

Over the last couple of weeks I went to Wales, Holland, and Peru as part of my on-going Commonwealth project, which will include photographs from all 351 towns and cities in Massachusetts. I started the project last summer and have already been to many out-of-the-way places. Below are a selection of images from the most recent roll of color film.

When I talk to people about this project, their reaction is overwhelmingly positive. I think people are most curious about what I’m photographing. At first I thought I knew: the close relationship of nature and developed land in a place where every square mile of land is incorporated. But to be honest, I rarely go out looking to photograph any particular thing; so now I usually answer with something unintentionally cryptic, like “whatever I see” or “stuff” or “found objects” or “things.”

This endeavor is a process of exploration — of the spirit of the Commonwealth and in search of whatever personal style emerges from a sizable, multi-year undertaking. I feel like I’m growing as a photographer, becoming more comfortable standing out on the corner in the blighted parts of Brockton, accidentally trespassing in the western suburbs, and photographing people in Central Mass. In some especially rural areas, just finding something memorable and interesting can be a challenge, which is leading me to question my relationship to the places, things, and people I photograph.