featured project:
Our Town… fading glimpses of the Midwest
project statement
Our Town… fading glimpses of the Midwest is an ongoing project, which is at the center of my photographic endeavors. To me, these lyrical images are like a box of intensely personal, childhood memories, which I hold dear to my heart. I have collected and preserved them to remind me of my life, who I am, and where I come from. With deep affection, they depict glimpses of the world I grew up in during the ’50s and ’60s and present scenes that remind me of the love, fun and humor I have known, as well as a sense of sadness and nostalgia. These images and the memories they represent bring a smile to my face as they present the survivors, like me— a little worse for wear, but still here and still persisting.
Today the Midwest is speeding towards a blandness of modern, nondescript urban planning, transforming itself, along with the rest of the country, into an undistinguished sameness. This trend may soon render the Midwest to a mere geographical territory. But for me, one can still find the heartland of America clinging to the Midwest.
The images of the Our Town Project are grounded in the presentation of quintessential scenes of Midwestern towns and neighborhoods, The work is focused on exploring the surviving vestiges of America’s mid-20th-century heartland. This was a time when the Midwest was comprised of myriad small towns constructed around thriving manufacturing entities and their supporting neighborhoods.
Rooted in a documentary style derived from the Farm Security Administration’s photographic project of the 1930s and ’40s, these images are formal, impartial views of the Midwest, which quietly emote a sense of home.
This project presents a topographical presentation of early to mid-twentieth century, Midwest vernacular scenes as they appear today. I have chosen to work in black and white for this project for several reasons. For one, black and white seems to lend itself to the idea of preservation and the historical nature of these images. Black and white also allows these images to achieve an iconic quality as monuments of a disappearing past preserving a visual narrative of a place and time.
This work is about survivors— those buildings and neighborhoods that have somehow persisted amidst the constant pressure of economic decline, urban revitalization, demolition, and the continuing loss of the Midwest’s unique identity. It is also about the persistence of the people of the Midwest as seen in what they have been able to preserve, and, though devoid of people, these images overflow with a human presence that is palpable. This work is an attempt at preservation— preservation of a childhood growing up in the Midwest during the 1950s and ’60s.
These photographs are glimpses of that childhood presented as nostalgic scenes steeped in the unique ambiance of the Midwest. Here are the tree-lined streets; the neighborhood houses; the corner stores, and downtown streets all recognized from those childhood times and waiting to be explored. Much like the Midwest, these simple, quiet scenes evoke a sense of modesty and subtleness, allowing the viewer to appreciate the commonplace— sprinkled with glimpses of beauty, intrigue, humor and love.