Passerby

Our collective mythology of the American road trip creates an unrealistic image of America. Passerby consists of images made while traveling at 55mph or faster in an eighteen-wheel truck. Over the course of driving hundreds of miles through the American West, I amassed a collection of over twenty thousand photographs. I am editing these images into different formal presentations; a cinematic three channel video installation slide show, a single channel version with narrower visual themes, a photographic book of about 100 images, and a smaller book of images paired with drawings.

The photographs from Passerby conjoin the voyeuristic act of seeing with the camera’s ability to render an image at high speeds. Making the images involved a process of active looking and confronting the dislocation from the place that is part of the traveler’s experience. Compounded by moving at high speeds, the photographs are removed from the initial experience and context of seeing through human vision. Passerby is a meditation on seeing the American West.