Ulrich Eigner
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American Roadscapes
American Roadsapes / Studies in Americana #1
On my trips throughout the United States I have been taking pictures of the experience of 'driving' as the primary mode of traveling. All the pictures were taken through the front and side windows of the moving car (most of them while driving myself).
Opposed to more traditional ways of photographically exploring landscape by consciously setting up the camera for each image the experience of landscape through the car is faster and leaves less time for contemplation. With the easy accessibility of nature through the road and the distance that can be covered with the car, the single impression becomes less specific and looses importance compared to the overall impression of a long day’s drive.
I divided the photographs into stretches of travel through distinctly different landscapes (the plains of South Dakota, the mountains and valleys of Colorado, etc.) and composited the photographs by layering them over each other in Photoshop.
Each resulting composite image creates a landscape of its own that closely resembles the overall impression of driving through it. Although the single picture and thus the single moment of memory is lost within the composite image one can 'go into' the image and find details and particularities of the scenery.
The Roadscapes combine my awe for nature with the curiosity of traveling. The dreamy, indistinct quality of the images and the softness of edges and light invoke in me memories that I have from prior experiences in various landscapes. Thus they not only serve as an image of memory of the specific stretch of road and landscape I drove but also as a projection screen for prior landscape experiences.
As for the viewer the Roadscapes are informative in the impressions they give of particular landscapes. They communicate the beauty of landscape and the awe nature can induce. With the Picturesque, the Sublime, and Romanticism (in particular Turner) in the back of my head I am thinking about landscape and nature not as exotic experience far from today’s lifestyle revolving around urban centers but rather as an experience accessible from the bigger and smaller highways. The road becomes part of the landscape, other signs of human existence (cars, signs, buildings, etc) only slightly shimmer through, and the infinity and immeasurability of nature (and in some images the vastness of America) come to the fore.
Although not shot in a contemplative way the dreamy and sometimes mysterious quality of the composite images can induce a contemplative mood in which the viewer can bring his own memories, knowledge, and feelings into the viewing experience even if he has never been to the particular landscape himself.
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