Highway 288
University of Virginia
John Quale, Professor
2003, Four Months
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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
