In the Spring of 2009 I received a small commission to photograph the sites of the Woodstock Land Conservancy.
At first I was a bit perplexed because most of my life I had photographed architecture and the elements that inhabit urban landscapes. Working in the new, unfamiliar natural landscape, I found a diffuse subject that seemed undefined, seemingly boundless, and so often loaded with color and prettiness as to be inescapably sublime.
Having been initiated, I continued working with my new subject and discovered an undercurrent of structure. While these were not urban landscapes by any means, they were nevertheless created more by the hand of man than "naturally."
Virtually all of this region has been forested to an impressive degree.
The denuding of the land, and the infrastructure created to move lumber
gave way to quarrying, altering of the land, and the modification of waterways.
Consequently, the scenes I explored are more reminiscent of architecture
than might be expected. They include stockpiles, quarry ponds and paths,
and reconstructed river basins, all of which reveal a structural heft and
logic similar to that of an urban landscape.
The inspiration for The Uninhabited Landscape is integrally linked to that
of my architectural photographs: the notion that to the artist, all instances
of subject matter are visually equivalent, regardless of how ordinary they
may appear, and from them may be distilled great complexity and emotion.