Imperfect Places, Intimate Places

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To live in the United States is to live within contradictions. To myself, nowhere is this more evident than in the American West. Being from Colorado, I have an intimate and complicated relationship with this State, its land, and the family who call it home. The region at large holds a history and connotations that are in sharp contrast to the isolating, lonely, and disturbing truths present in current life. Colorado’s sprawling prairies and towering mountains invite musing of a “free” and untamed frontier. The land’s rivers promised wealth to prospectors in the gold rush. The crisp air provided hopes of health and recovery, with the State still dotted by remnants of Tuberculosis huts that treated the “lungers”, who were the foundation of many contemporary destinations. The region is natural, wealthy, and free from the detritus of the big city. This myth is in part what drew mine and many other families to Colorado in the 60s and 70s. They were promised good health, fortune, and adventure, but with all the amenities and comforts one may have desired in the modern era. This impossible fiction has been meticulously documented by photographers from the FSA through Robert Adams and beyond. Despite this examination and critique, the West’s mythos is a story that still lives strong in contemporary times, with heightened contradictions and increased tensions.

For the past few years, I have continued the tradition of documenting these phenomena by rephotographing some of the locations of historical images and documenting my personal experiences growing up and then moving away from Colorado. My photographs explore how the West’s mythos and realities of suburban life have clashed to shape mine and my family’s lives. Some contradictions seem to perpetually exist, affecting the landscapes and people who call the State home. Now, with a familial shake-up coinciding with a disturbing turn in politics, I have found that more parallels between personal domestic unease and the wider world can be drawn. In this project, I seek to capture the desires and myths of the West informed by their historical contexts, in contradiction to its and my realities growing up closeted in the region and becoming an outsider to the State.