A Walk Through Suburbia

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“…mi ritrovai per una selva oscura…” – Dante Alighieri – The Inferno

“…I found myself through a dark wood,…”

This part of the open­ing line of Dante’s Inferno, writ­ten in the early 14th Cen­tury, presents the basic human con­di­tion of con­fu­sion, doubt and the search for mean­ing. As I begin one of my walks through an Amer­i­can sub­urb, Dante’s words often come to me as the most appro­pri­ate prepa­ra­tion for what I am about to encounter.

These images are part of a larger body of work in which I look at the often odd struc­tures, land­scapes, envi­ron­men­tal arrange­ments, signs, sym­bols and dec­o­ra­tions one finds when walk­ing through Amer­i­can sub­ur­bia. I grew up in the sub­urbs, and, partly, have lived in the sub­urbs, but I have lit­tle affin­ity for such loca­tions. I have always felt that the arti­fi­cial arrange­ment of homes on plots of land, each simul­ta­ne­ously cor­don­ing off pub­lic and secret lives, has cre­ated a strange uni­verse not unlike Dante’s Dark Wood. Even a view of the sky above is framed with the strict bor­ders of sub­ur­ban living.

Odd sym­bols, unbal­anced jux­ta­po­si­tions, and strong impli­ca­tions of secrecy and mys­tery – all assault my pho­to­graphic eye like the stab of beach sand blow­ing in a high wind. These images attempt to ask ques­tions with­out giv­ing conclusions—an aes­thet­ics that mod­els my own attempt to under­stand the essen­tial mean­ing of why we live the way we do.