Landscrape

2012-01-09T11:25:00.002-05:00

"A massive controversy emerged after a University of Iowa professor published a damning portrait of the state in The Atlantic. Here's an update and a look to how young Iowans are shaping the conversation using film and new media."

http://theruralsite.blogspot.com/2012/01/whats-matter-with-iowa-part-1.html

Naples, FL

2011-12-01T23:31:00.000-05:00

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When I first saw the image above, I felt like I struck gold. I hadn't been down as far south as Naples, and knowing how the rest of southwest Florida was faring, I expected more of the same.

What I found was a thriving subdivision under construction. I stopped and talked to one of the contractors, and he said that the above Google map must have been around a year old, and they've been building and selling for about a year. These homes, however, are all intended to be in gated and walled communities, and cost around half a million.

Naples is full of gated and walled communities. I had seven sites marked on the map for the day, and only got into two. Needless to say, I was disappointed.

I love that the builders are hiding the dirt mound used to grade the earth behind a privacy fence.

Again, a row of tree appears. This time, they're just awaiting their final planting.

The sign says:

PRESERVE

AREA

THIS AREA

SHALL NOT BE

DISTURBED

I could only laugh at the irony in this scene. Perfect grass, butted up against the rough nature of Florida. A sign, designated where the wild begins and civilization ends. There where countless versions of this sign all ringing this designated wild area.

I wish there was a sign like this at the state line.

Witness: Defining Conservation Photography Feature

2011-11-01T09:23:00.001-04:00

on the ground

2011-10-23T12:47:00.000-04:00

This is, or was, a dusky pygmy rattlesnake. I found him (or her) dead in the road, but he (or she) wasn't squashed, so I'm not sure what did him (or her) in. Still, we know life goes on long after the asphalt laying machine leaves.

South Gulf Cove, Port Charlotte, FL

2011-10-22T12:43:00.000-04:00

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Again, I was amazed that I spend an entire day in an area about 2 square miles. Even though on the map there's seemingly nothing, when you're in the space, it's a place full of life, just one dissected by asphalt.
Even though the name sounds like it promises home on the Gulf of Mexico, and many of the homes are on manmade canals and have docks, getting to the actual Gulf is a long journey. even though you're only a couple of thousand feet (as the crow flies) from Charlotte Harbor and the rest of the Gulf.
If you follow the map, you'll find a tiny set of locks north of the development, and that's the only way to access the Gulf from your home. It's a strange thing to look at aerially, seeing this heavy handed man made design on a peninsula with so much perserved space. Of course, I can say the same thing about the neighboring Rotonda development.

I still love finding these little places like the above, where there's a little bit of human reclamation going on. That little white speck in the upper middle left was a boat, just sort of floating along the opposite shore.

The biggest landmark is a radio tower, visible in the upper right.

Again, I'm struck by the infrastructure that exists for a place that will never be what it was intended to be.

the sign advises the general public that this lot is under 24 hour video surveillance.

I have a odd attractive to turkey buzzards. Whenever I see them, I will stop and try to photograph them, but the movement of me setting up a camera and sneaking close to them usually spooks them and they fly away. I have no idea what they where doing on top of this little mound, other than playing their version of king of the hill. Still, actually getting setup to photograph without scaring off a naturally timid bird is an accomplishment to me.

in the air

2011-10-15T09:00:00.000-04:00

So while out, I spy this plane, probably out of Miami, headed northwest, and dragging long contrails. I stopped what I was doing and watched it traverse the sky, all the while leaving a trail.

I've explored with the interaction of planes and the sky before. I guess there's still some attraction to that combination. It seems so pure, so clean, such a elegant act even though it seems like a violation of the sky.

2011-09-08T10:45:00.000-04:00

North Port, Florida Part II

2011-09-02T11:50:00.000-04:00

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I had no intention of being so close to my last site, but the luck of the draw found me in the same general locale as my previous entry. I spent several hours in an area about 2 square miles. It becomes amazing sometimes how the homogeny of these sites is broken down, sometimes by nature, sometimes by the further intrusion of man recreating these spaces into something, this time a fairly large dirtbike / 4-wheeler track.

Looking through these mounds that had become ramps, there's an abundance of sea shells, most of them tiny, but a few clam shells as big as my hand, if not bigger. Where these dredged up from the sea floor to be used as fill dirt? Is this the remnants of Florida's underwater past? Thoughts like these vex me. Where is the answer?

I've found a theme that's started to bubble up subconsciously.

North Port, Florida Part I

2011-08-23T09:03:00.005-04:00

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There's this road that I-75 passes over between North Port and Port Charlotte. I've probably driven over this road a few dozen times, and if this was rural Georgia or South Carolina or Tennessee, I would assume, more than likely, that the road was a county road, leading off to some farm or pasture down the road.

Since this is Florida, that's not the case. The road is actually Yorkshire Street, a main thoroughfare for a development whose name has been seemingly lost, but whose roads remain.

There's a series of bridges in the area, crossing what are labelled as waterways. 20+ years of plant growth, however, have rendered them useless for navigation in all but a shallow draft canoe. This is the bridge crossing the Bethlehem Waterway.

A view of the Bethlehem Waterway. There where several alligators calling, although I never saw them.

A view of the Cocoplum Waterway.

Again, the usual dumping you find in these unintended rural area.

Cruising these streets, I found an odd thing: a grouping of pine trees, planted more or less in a row and more or less evenly spaced. This presents a mystery: Who planted these trees, and why?

This is what I'm up against

2011-08-14T20:56:00.000-04:00

Need more land t-shirt

2011-07-10T14:50:00.000-04:00

sometimes there's a sign that you're doing the right thing. Sometimes that sign is a t shirt.

The Grove, Lehigh Acres, FL

2011-07-03T11:35:00.000-04:00

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Arborwood, Fort Myers, FL

2011-07-02T09:33:00.000-04:00

I hate to think that jadedness has started to set in concerning this project of mine, but it has. I've seen countless acres of half developed land that'll probably sit in the state for the remainder of my lifetime, if not longer.

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Here's a typical thing I've seen countless times: A rancher owns land that he grazes his herd on. He sells the land to a developer, and then the market crashes. The developer, facing paying ass high taxes on residential land, rents the land to a "livestock management" company, who puts the minimum number of cattle on the land to retain the farm tax rate while the developer waits for the market to turn around.

At least the rancher made a pretty penny on the deal. The rest of us, not so much.

Lehigh Acres, Florida, Part II

2011-07-01T08:00:00.003-04:00

I'm encouraged by what I've seen in Lehigh Acres, not by man's action toward the landscape, but the action of nature reclaiming the space. If you haven't read The World Without Us, I highly recommend it. In the book, Alan Weisman talks about places that have been abandoned by man, and now we can very carefully observe what it looks like when nature reclaims an area. This space around Lehigh Acres is, I think, another of of those spaces that could have been illustrated in the book. Cracks form in the asphalt, grass and weeds get the in crack, push them apart further, and the process repeats itself. Vines grow over the asphalt, hiding it from view and creating what looks like long stripes of fields while the grasses and weeds slowly crumble the asphalt. Ever slowly, the roads are being erased, regardless of what Google shows.

Maybe one day these roads will be gone, and this will go back to being forest.

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As we would expect, out of the way cul-de-sacs become dumping grounds.

Now here's something I never thought I would encounter: seemingly abandoned bee hives, the kind used to pollinate plants. Some of the are still populated by bees, but why are they there? They're no where near any groves or fields.

Even bees can't get a break. I guess the keeper thought this was enough of an out of the way place to leave the bees.

Unnamed Subdivision, Fort Myers, FL

2011-06-29T08:00:00.000-04:00

Sometimes all you get is a gate and earthen ramparts facing the road. I'm going to have to figure out how to get into this area, but there's no identifying marks as to who the develop is or anything, just a really nice gate and some landscaping.

oh, and a big ass crane way off in the distance. Surely someone is missing a crane.

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Alas, Babylon

2011-06-28T21:46:00.000-04:00

"Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour is thy judgment come." - Revelation 18:10

I first read (or rather listened to it, narrated by Will Patton) Alas, Babylon earlier this year. It was released in the late 50s at the height of the Cold War, when nuclear annihilation was a heartbeat away. The title refers to the phrase "Alas, Babylon" that the characters use as a way to signal, in code, that the end is imminent.

What's salient for me about this book is the setting, a small town in central Florida. I drifted around countless towns similar to the town in the book before the holocaust, and the memory of the book drifted back into my head, not because of war, but because of the destruction of the natural landscape of Florida.

I feel that it's bad luck to name a show or body of work before it's fully formed, but Alas, Babylon somehow fits.

Trouble in Florida's "Tomatoland"

2011-06-19T16:36:00.001-04:00

From the St. Pete Times.

Portico Development, Fort Myers, Florida

2011-06-17T10:10:00.006-04:00

sometimes all you need are a few pictures to tell the story of a place.

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Lehigh Acres, Florida

2011-06-16T09:42:00.004-04:00

To call Lehigh Acres the ground zero of the housing crisis in Florida is a bit of misnomer to me; I prefer to think of it as patient zero. Following a long and sordid history, Lehigh Acres has over 11,000 miles of roads, lots for 152,000 homes, and only a 10% occupancy rate on all those lots. It's long history of failure dwarfs the land usage failure around me in the Tampa area.

I had a ill feeling driving around Lehigh Acres; many of the roads are still dirt roads, and it was quite quiet, even with all those roads.

I didn't make many images while there; I was very unsure about the place. I did pass a idyllic looking pine forest next to the road, with houses barely visible. I walked through the area, the ground covered with several inches of pine needles. It's a scene I see very rarely; I still can't adequately describe the ground of the wooded area covered in the sea of pine needles. It's quite a beautiful site to me; and I had to image it because it awed me so.

There's also several canals cutting through the area. I'm sure if Lehigh Acres was built to anything near capacity, the canals would be needed to control water runoff and keep houses from flooding. But with the capacity at 10%, they just become another unnatural feature to this place.

Lehigh Acres represents everything that is wrong with Florida; the overbuilding, the greed, the failure to grow responsibly. Maybe that's what made me uneasy; seeing the heart (and start) of the blight. It's like being in the heart of the fire, when all this time I've been dancing around the edges.

I've got to go back; there's too many images not captured, and more area to explore.

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I'm just going to leave this here to deal with later...

2011-06-09T23:29:00.005-04:00

New site plan OK'd for Walmart Supercenter in Pasco

Plenty of maps here.

notice the date on the master plan: 2002. Other than the mall, none of this has been built, defeated by environmental impact and the poor economy.

Boom or bust, however, we're getting our Wal-Mart, by god.

and this gem:

..."creating the second largest intersection in the United States! Did you know that the only larger intersection is in Las Vegas and is highlighted by a road known as the Sunset Strip!"

Charlotte County, Florida Part II

2011-05-30T15:57:00.001-04:00

My second site is functionally the same, but has a completely different feel to the landscape. Miles of roads, cut into fields instead of forests. I drove around for 20 minutes trying to figure out how to image this landscape. It was so desolate feeling. The odd thing is that every street had a fire hydrant, and the hydrant where all freshly painted and some even had fresh sod around them. There's a couple of water pump stations, and they're immaculate. Even though there's about 6 square miles of land, miles and miles of roads, with zero houses, the county still maintains the infrastructure. I could still picture in my mind the cattle that used to roam this land.

I did encounter a couple while in this neighborhood. They where lost and couldn't find their way out. If I didn't have two GPSs (one being an iPhone) I probably would have suffered the same fate. Luckily I was able to guide them out, and hopefully they're on their way back to Michigan, never to return to this desolate landscape. I'm going to head back, since there's a lot I missed even after a day in the sun.

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this was the last image I took that day. Miles from the nearest house, across a man-made yet swampy looking pond across from what looked like a place to dump excess dirt, was a rope swing.

Charlotte County, Florida Part I

2011-05-21T16:53:00.003-04:00

As I promised myself, I began my trips into the developed-but-not-built portions of the state. I started in two sections of Charlotte County, the first being south of North Port, and the second being an apparently abandoned section of the Rotonda development on the peninsula.

The first area is one of these truly weird areas of Florida. Streets where cut into scrub forest, but the 2004 hurricanes and the collapse of the housing market has left what's basically forests with gridded roads in them. There's a few houses here and there; I'd say about half looked lived in, and the other half looked unoccupied and have realtors' lock boxes on the doors. The entire time I was there I didn't pass one single vehicle, and one saw a handful driving around, mostly on the main road that cuts through the development. I spent a good hour and half in this area that looks like it may have been designated as a park one day; big pond in the middle, surrounded by fields. At the north end of the field, there's construction debris and what's probably one of the highest pieces of earth in Charlotte County, albeit man-made. On the plateau, there's a broke-down earth mover and evidence of partying, like old fire circles and beer cans and the like. Moving through this space was easy, it was like any field I've even been in. Photographing the streets/forests where different. Like I said, it's an odd space to be in, to be on a residential road, surrounded by thick forest.

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It's hard to see from the road, but this is a one of the many cut throughs to get to a canal that feeds to the Tippecanoe Bay.

depression era

2011-05-14T00:16:00.001-04:00

I can't help but to think about my grandfather every time I listen to this song. If you haven't seen That Evening Sun (or The Accountant) they're both damn fine ruminations on what happens to the homestead when it's time for one generation to move on, and the next one to take over. Films like this fill me with fear for the future; what the fuck do I know about ranching? There's only one way to learn and I spent those years in art school.

"Bury his body in the ol' sinkhole"

Sometimes I walk in the middle of the road

2011-05-10T09:00:00.000-04:00

a little on duality

2011-05-05T09:40:00.004-04:00

There's a awesome amount of duality when you recognize yourself as being a child of the South, and also recognize the turmoil of the history of the region. Pride in one's area of origin is often offset by not wanting to seem like you condone the root causes of the Civil War and the resulting 150 years of social and racial turmoil that has resulted. The Drive-By Truckers wrote a double album exploring, among other things, this duality of mind (and even duality of existence), and even as this album closes in on being ten years old, I don't think I'm (or anyone else) any closer to fully solidifying one's feelings of pride along with one's shame.

DBT calls this "The Southern Thing". That song ends on a refrain used throughout the album "Proud of the glory, stare down the shame / Duality of the southern thing". Indeed, most of the first half of the double album is about rectifying the region's sins with the changes since then.

What we have to do is to figure out how we fit into the grand scheme of things without feeling like a fraud or sellout, or that you're turning your back on anyone or anything. Calling myself a Southerner is not about pride. It's my identity, tattooed on my soul, permanent and impermeable.

I'm a Southerner, I'll always be one, good and bad, heaven and hell, cats and dogs, black and white.

UPDATE: Southern Spaces published an essay entitled "The Civil War and Emancipation 150 Years On", touching on some of the same issues.

more turtles

2011-05-01T22:49:00.001-04:00

It occurs to me that I see a lot more than what I actually photograph when I'm out and about.

Tornadoes

2011-04-29T00:04:00.001-04:00

This is the report from my mom about 20 miles north of Chattanooga: "Items that fell from the sky and landed in our yard yesterday...a snapshot, pieces of wallpaper, roofing, insulation, flooring and paneling, and a studio picture of a little girl. And a letter from a sign."

There's no telling, geographically at least, where all that stuff came from.

A genesis

2011-04-28T09:04:00.001-04:00

"We Southerns are a people fighting again for our country, defending the last remaining stand of real forest. Although we love to frolic, the time has come to fight. We must fight.

In new rebellion we stand together, black and white, urbanite and farmer, workers all, in keeping Dixie. We a patient people who for generations have not been ousted from the land, and we are willing to fight for the birthright of our children's children and their children's children, to be of a place, in all ways, for all time. What is left is not enough. When we say the South will rise again we can mean that we will allow the cutover forests to return to their former grandeur and pine plantations to grow wild." - Janisse Ray, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

I remember the first time I read this passage, in one of JFK's terminal waiting for a flight in the early morning. It's often a humbling experience to have someone else so succinctly put your thoughts into words, and this was no excuse. I sat dumbfounded, and had to suffer through a two day visit whilst trying to wrap my head around what I should be doing as an artist. Re-reading it still hurts my heart.

I think this is where I diverge from some of my contemporaries. For me, this is not a fight about what is "right" or "what we should do", it is a fight for the very essence of my existence. My family tree is Southern through and through; from shrimpers and fishermen around Charleston to hardscrabble Cohee farmers and ne'er-do-wells from Florida. Good and bad, it's all there, and I claim it all. To try to hide part of it would be a disservice to all those who came before me and to those who will come after me. This duality, alas, is a discussion for another day.

For me, this fight is not an academic fight. It's preservation of my land. When I say my land, it's not in some socialistic (or Socialistic) sense of "This land is our land, this land is your land". This is literally my family's land, which, some day, may be my land. There's countless folks in the same boat that I'm in. The work I do is also for them.

I fully intend to leave this earth fishing the same ponds and lakes, watching deer and turkey wander through the same woods, and watching horses, cows and goats graze the same lands as my great-granddaddy did some 100 years ago.

that tiny little glow

2011-04-25T22:37:00.000-04:00

is the eyeball of one of the alligators that live in the ponds down the road. This is what I like about Florida. I'm surrounded my wildlife that is readily apparent. In South Carolina, or Tennessee, or Georgia, wildlife seems more....hidden.

Turtle rescue part one

2011-04-23T17:43:00.001-04:00

We encountered a huge red eared slider in the road. This old lady (I'm guessing) was at least a foot long in the carapace and covered with algae. I picked her up, dodged the obligatory defensive pee, and deposited her on the muddy pond bank about a foot away from the water.

The turtle just sat there hunkered down in her shell. I gave her a good "GIT!" like you'd use with a stubborn horse and she hauled ass off into the water.

Earth Now: American Photographers and the Environment

2011-04-21T23:52:00.003-04:00

My copy came today. The first thing I notice is the back cover is the Bill Owens image of Monument Valley (the image that Bill gave to me as a gift) hanging in our living room. I see this image every day and chuckle at Bill's irony. I'm just glad to have met Bill Owens a few years through a mutual friend. I wish he would swing back through Florida on one of his sojourns.

Katherine Ware draws two distinct lines of images in this catalog: the first are images that function (or functioned) as means of advocacy, starting with the idealized images of Ansel Adams and Eliot Porter, then discussing Robert Glenn Ketchum's trip to Alaska and subsequent advocation to Congress which led to the Tongass Reform Bill under Reagan.

The second section deals with work that she describes as "Despite their social content, these pieces were made by people who consider themselves artists. their work is presented, almost without exception, in galleries, museums, and art-world magazines, rather than being seen in the context of propaganda or advocacy." Clearly this section is the New Topographics influence of the exhibition and catalog.

This is where I have the biggest internal conflict. I am a huge fan of Adams, not because of his images, but because of his advocacy. Yet I'm clearly in the New Topographics era. I often feel a wall exists between contemporary landscape imagery and the legacy of advocacy that earlier images carried. At SPE in Dallas a few years ago I saw some horrible horrible things in the landscape but little resolution. At times a lyric from Sleater-Kinney's One Beat haunts my thoughts: "Is real change an illusion?"

I suppose in a lot of ways I'm carrying some sort of legacy from Adams and, say, Klett. It's probably subconscious at this point. I'm still reading through the text so I expect some more moments of clarity.

One of my favorite Johnny Cash moments is a clip of a performance of The Ballad of Ira Hayes on a reservation, followed by As Long as the Grass Will Grow paired with the reality of reservation.

Cash's work is related to my process of photography. He wasn't afraid to document, and neither should I.

Earth Now: American Photographers and the Environment

Last night's walk

2011-04-21T08:15:00.000-04:00

One of this summer's project

2011-04-20T11:40:00.000-04:00

Some months ago The Boston Globe published these aerial pictures of developments in Florida. I've been thinking about these abandoned developments and what I could do to image them, and seeing how the Globe has taken care of the birds eye view, I've been left with the human level view. That's fine with me; I've more interested in what is encountered on the ground. Birds eye is too abstract.

There's another one very close to me. I drive by this thing several times a week. It started as a pasture, then was graded, roads and an ostentatious facade was added, and the developer went bankrupt.

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Here's to some trespassing.