Matthew Baum, “Land of Lincoln, Central Illinois”, 2012

#somereallygoodones, #matthewbaum, #theroad, #landscape, #landoflincoln

The Road is a trope in all forms of classic literature. When you think of one story, you think of an earlier one: Cormac McCarthy, Mad Max, Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, Jack Kerouac, Huckleberry Finn, Gulliver, Don Quixote, Ulysses etc. give way one to the other, characters in search of enlightenment or truth or whatever. Buddha, Confucius, Jesus were all on the road at some point.

In photography, the great American road image of the modern era is undoubtedly Robert Frank's “US 285 New Mexico”, 1958. It burns its way into your retina and memory bank. It is complete: handsome, full of promise and questioning.

In the history of photography, a very early photograph, Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre’s “Boulevard du Temple”, 1838 is a street picture. Not only is it an image of a boulevard or avenue — a road — but time is evident in the long exposure needed to make it (a man having his boots shined disappears).

The Road is the journey: literal, personal or temporal.

Louis-Jacques Mande Daguerre, “Boulevard du Temple, 1838-39

Look at Matthew Baum’s triptych of a bleak wintertime cornfield in Illinois with its sweeping and epic view, limitless as it were. But it has something intangible. We may be bearing witness to some unseen transgression. It has the weird weight or gravitas of Roger Fenton’s “The Valley of the Shadow of Death”, 1855 with its strikingly modern landscape, a blank empty sky and an easy rolling line of horizon, bisected by a road leading to the left leading littered with cannonballs, detritus that is mute witness to Crimean battle horror. That work is spooky and deceptive, simple and potent, and full of dread.

Similarly the Baum seems to offer lost testimonials, worked into the brown earth which has been plowed over and over, with the erasing of histories and vectors of direction angling out of the frame. The details may be lost but not the spirit. The sun may be shining, but the image is chillingly cool.

The road can be full of potential. We hope dreams will come true when we get to our destination. The photographer’s low vantage point here positions us at the center of the work. We can take their place and become the protagonist: the seeker, the searcher, the traveler.

The road can be sublimely beautiful, luminous and radiant as it aches for us to seek the just-beyond-the-horizon spiritual redemption. It may be rich like Dorothy’s Technicolor “Yellow Brick Road” to Oz or minimal, drained of color and life, haunted.

The road is not always linear with deep plunging perspective, it can be broken up with abrupt discordant, abstracted planes of information yielding jolting, jarring rhythm.

The road can be a dead end.

The road can be dirt, gravel, asphalt or dreams. We journey along like John Bunyan’s Pilgrim progressing along asking yet encountering questions.

Do all roads lead to the infinite or are they circular bringing us back to ourselves, to HOME?

A traveling salesman stops and asks,

“Where does this road go?”

Farmer replies, “I been livin’ here all my life. It ain’t gone nowhere yet.”

Classic.

These posts are from my new project “Great Photographs …or, at least, Some Really Good Ones”. Photo, text, and some times, audio or video.

#somereallygoodones, #theunseeneye, #wmhunt, #collectiondancingbear, #collectionblindpirate, #greatphotographs, #howilookatphotographs, #photographsfromtheunconsicous, #collectingislikerunningaroundinathunderstorm hopingyoullbehitbylightning, #aphotographsogooditmakesyoufartlightning, #photographychangedmylifeitgavemeone, #matthewbaum, #theroad, #landscape, #landoflincoln, #travelingsalesman