"Road Closed" Series Statement



Since the 1950’s, ever-expanding suburban development has devoured what was once pristine wilderness in the American Southwest. We are left with miles and miles of housing developments and shopping malls with little greenery to soften the assault to our senses. This was my first suburban landscape series where I started to explore this disregard of nature by photographing the unabated demise of the desert outside of Phoenix, Arizona.

On an aesthetic level, I am interested in photographing vernacular, mundane objects juxtaposed against the landscape. Visually these objects, like signs along a road, billboards and trash, intrude on one’s enjoyment of what used to be a pristine landscape. By highlighting the words and letters found in this landscape, they become objects of interest in and of themselves. The suggestive, abstract qualities of the image, along with the literal, allow the viewer to draw his own conclusion about the subject matter.