Highway 288
University of Virginia
John Quale, Professor
2003, Four Months
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Christopher
Connock
 
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Highway 288 is a photographic exploration of a highway extension only a few miles away from my childhood home. I was initially drawn to the utter devastation that highway construction incurs and began by studying Mathew Brady's photos of post civil war Richmond, Va as a possible local historical juxtaposition. My first set of photographs closely mirrored Brady's aesthetic, but I felt that they did not truly capture the feeling of the site. Upon further research I found that Brady was less of an documentarian than a self-aggrandizing showman with a list of celebrity clients. Instead of approaching the site with moral condemnation I sought to explore the vivid new landscape that emerged from this human intervention with post-modern eyes. The result was a series of detail shots of dirt with hyper saturated colors and a incredibly narrow depth of field. All the photographs were shot digitally and displayed on a plasma screen - the projected light further magnifying the dreamlike mirco-landscape.
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Early black and white film exposures
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Early black and white film exposures