Yuma, Arizona, 2007, archival inkjet print, 30" x 40"
Algodones, Mexico, 2007, archival inkjet print, 30" x 40"
Yuma, Arizona 2007, archival inkjet print, 30" x 40"
Cabazon, California, 2009, archival inkjet print, 30" x 40"
Yuma, Arizona, 2007, archival inkjet print, 30" x 40"
Cabazon, California, 2012, archival inkjet print, 30" x 40"
Zion National Park, Utah 2009, archival inkjet print, 30" x 40"
Temecula, California, 2007, archival inkjet print, 30" x 40"
El Centro, California, 2007, archival inkjet print, 30" x 40"
Baker, California, 2007, archival inkjet print, 30" x 40"
Quartzsite, Arizona, 2007, archival inkjet print, 30" x 40"
Moapa, Nevada, 2007, archival inkjet print, 30" x 40"
Los Angeles, California, 2008, archival inkjet print, 30" x 40"
The American West holds a mythic place in the nation's psyche. It is the place where pioneers sought their fortunes, in the process decimating the indigenous population.
The Western dream is the American dream, its mythology cemented in the hearts and minds of generations of Americans by movies and television. Among the first hit motion pictures was a Western, "The Great Train Robbery," the first of the Western movie genre, which remained popular for over fifty years, and continues to this day. According to Hollywood, the West is where men were men, who "had to do what men had to do." Women were either helpmates, victims or arm candy. Nature (of which Native Americans were merely an inconvenient part) was to be subjugated. Western stories were raw and essential -- good versus evil, right versus wrong, white hats versus black hats. Western landscapes were bare, rugged, honest, and typically dry.
These images do not bank on the West's undeniably glorious vistas. Nor do they necessarily honor the sacrifice of the men and women who "civilized" the wilderness. Instead, these images reflect what is actually there now, not a grandly storied past, but the West of highway overpasses, fake dinosaurs, parking lots, concreted rivers and statuary cowboys... the hard-won spoils of America's Western dream.
|
