For many Americans the word travel conjures images of faraway

Transcription

1 Shooting 89 Brian Atkinson Department of Art For many Americans the word travel conjures images of faraway white sand beaches, exotic rain forests, or city streets filled with sights, sounds, and smells both foreign and new. Some anticipate purchasing new wardrobes, experiencing different culinary treats, or perhaps searching for bargain airfare and hotel accommodations. For the past several years, travel for me has become hundreds of hours spent behind the wheel of the family sedan, sleeping in fifty-dollar motels or in the backseat of the car, burgers from the standard fast food outlets or chips and jerky from a gas station. As for my destination, it is always somewhere along the 2,033 miles of U.S. Highway 89, running from Piegan, Montana, in the north to Nogales, Arizona, in the south. This itinerary may not sound like a dream getaway to many, but for me this travel is an exhilarating labor of love. The idea of creating a photographic essay of Highway 89 began in 1988 during my undergraduate studies at Utah State University. A requirement of the Bachelor of Fine Arts program was to submit a portfolio demonstrating proficiency in the chosen field of expertise. I desperately wanted to find a subject that hadn t already been photographed by all of the preceding BFA students and that would lend itself to a body of work of approximately 20 interesting photographs. Midterms came and went. I was still without any idea what to photograph. My wife and I were preparing to make a trip to Sedona, Arizona, to my father s for Thanksgiving when we discovered something interesting: almost the entire distance from Logan to Sedona could be driven on a single highway U.S. 89. The idea was born. My first collection of Highway 89 photographs was completed in that single roundtrip between Logan and Sedona. It consisted of 16 black and white photographs taken with a large format camera and printed to 11 x 14. Some of the most memorable images for me were of Moqui Cave in southern Utah, the Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona, and the red rock formations of Sedona. The photographs were well received back at Utah State, and I was just plain relieved to have the assignment (and the BFA) finished. One of the purposes of a Master of Fine Arts degree is to force students to discover their own creative voice. In 1990 I found myself back at USU, this time as a graduate student trying to find my voice. I was bouncing around between projects and spending a lot of time on the road looking for abandoned buildings (my newest interest) to photograph. One day I made the trip through Logan canyon to Bear Lake, Paris, and Montpelier, For me this travel is an exhilarating labor of love. s p r i n g

2 The subject that I select is always unknown until I arrive at a marker and begin to search for the image that the highway offers. Idaho, then to Afton and Jackson, Wyoming, before returning home via the same route. The entire trip was once again along a single highway, U.S. 89. Although I had some success finding abandoned homes and schools and such, I found that I was also drawn to the landscape of the highway moving through a semi-inhabited wilderness. I discovered visual parallels of the highway as it traversed the Rocky Mountain terrain to the open desert vistas that it crossed in southern Utah and Northern Arizona. Intrigued, I decided to research the route of the highway in more detail. I was surprised to learn that U.S. 89 traverses parts of five states: Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, beginning at the border with Mexico and terminating at the border with Canada. A new idea formed, and I began photographing the highway once again, but this time the goal was to cover its entire length from border to border. Today, nearly a decade after completing my first comprehensive photographic survey of Highway 89, I am re-acquainting myself with this road that I have come to refer to as my own. This new project involves an entirely different approach to selecting what I photograph along the way. Previously, I traveled the highway looking for the kitschy architecture, the sweeping vistas, and the venerable roadside tableaus as subject matter. This time my stopping points are more defined and regular all 2,033 of them. My vision of the project is to travel the entire highway, including alternate routes and both loops in Yellowstone National Park, stopping to make a photograph at each mile marker along the way. The subject that I select is always unknown until I arrive at a marker and begin to search for the image that the highway offers. A few of the subjects have so far included: train tracks, billboards, gas stations, theaters, prisons, lakes, bridges, trees, shadows, geysers, orchards, trash, barriers, brokendown vehicles, houses, traffic lights, cemeteries, schools, mountains, skid marks, picnic sites, businesses, ATMs, crosswalks, mailboxes, churches, parks, dams, and even buffalo chips. In every photograph the actual highway is included: sometimes it is quite obvious, other times it is nearly invisible. For the viewer the road serves as a unifying thread, woven into this otherwise eclectic collection of images. As people see this work the question inevitably arises Why are you doing this? The answer to that lies at least partially in the changes and possibilities that have evolved with the development of digital photography. Both of the previous highway projects were based upon the concept of photographing using black and white film, a large format camera, and producing traditional silver gelatin prints for display. At the conclusion of those two projects, I had created a body of work totaling fewer than 85 prints. Although the photographs were created in a straightforward documentary fashion, the collection felt fragmented 2 p e r s p e c t i v e

3 and incomplete. Having traversed the entire highway several times as I made the photographs, I was keenly aware that there was so much more that could be included, but that the process of photographing, processing, printing, and editing was simply too time consuming and expensive. I finished the projects and thought that that would be the last of it. Then one day while researching on Kodak s website, I stumbled upon a fascinating movie1 made by Matt Frondorf about a trip he had taken from New York to California. He had positioned a camera facing out of the passenger side window and mechanically synchronized it to his odometer to record an image at one-mile increments over the entire course of the journey. I loved the idea, but felt that the procedure that he used was too sterile there was no evidence of the artist! The photographs were redundant with little sense of composition, framing, or even focus. But the decision to make photographs at regular intervals along the highway and display them electronically on the web seemed the right direction to take. By the time I was ready to commence with this third iteration of documenting Highway 89, I nearly had to scrap the project before even getting it started. My timing just happened to coincide with the dramatic rise in oil prices that sent the cost of gasoline through the roof. I reluctantly decided I would propose the project to Kelly Burgener, our college dean, and see if there was any chance of getting funding to help offset some of the rapidly escalating costs involved. I was quite surprised when he not only agreed to my request, but also encouraged me to apply for a Thomas E. Ricks fellowship as an additional funding source. Receiving funding from these two sacred trusts has caused me to look a little more closely at the project in order to recognize the value and benefit that it has for me and for our students. Photographing at each milepost along Highway 89 has been a challenging project for me. I cannot adequately describe my exhaustion after spending a full day on the road traveling a mere 100 miles or so, stopping 100 times to survey the road and the landscape, looking for the subject that best describes the essence of that particular stopping point. The visual and intellectual challenge that I face each time I stop to photograph has made me grow as an artist by improving my ability to think and see creatively. How stimulating it has been to subject the artistic sensibility, which we sometimes think of as unconstrained, to the exterior regimentation of one photograph at each milepost. This forced me to come to grips with the fact that everywhere there is something. My task was to plant my feet at an arbitrarily chosen spot and ask, Where is it? What is it? My eye and my mind grow ever sharper. How stimulating it has been to subject the artistic sensibility, which we sometimes think of as unconstrained, to the exterior regimentation of one photograph at each milepost. s p r i n g

4 My desire is that everyone will be able to relate to the project at some level. In the classroom I have had students comment that seeing the photographs has motivated them to undertake projects that had previously seemed overwhelming to them. I have also used the projects collectively to illustrate that there can be many different approaches to solving one problem. My desire is that everyone will be able to relate to the project at some level, whether it is a recognition of places visited, a pleasure of being an armchair traveler, or through an appreciation of the aesthetics found in everyday scenes, Highway 89 has much to give. Note: p e r s p e c t i v e

5 spring 2007

6 perspective

7 spring 2007

8 8 p e r s p e c t i v e