Another show in some way about the car, which seems to be my current theme, is ‘Periphery‘, a Photo series by Kristopher Stallworth, which is at ‘Corridor2122’ gallery in Fresno, California from Jan 3 – Jan 27, 2008.
I first saw these precise and carefully made night urban landscapes at ‘Rhubarb-Rhubarb‘ in Birmingham in July, when Kristopher brought them to show me. I was impressed by the work and tried to explain to him what I saw in them, and why I felt some worked better than others. These were images that made me see something in a different and new way, and particularly those that had a certain quality of the unexplained.
As the title suggests, these are views on the outskirts of the urban area, made around Bakersfield, California. These are often neglected areas, sometimes simply agricultural areas awaiting development, some with very much the feeling of edge and wastelands, shadowy areas that he illuminates partially using the headlamps of his car.
Perhaps its a difference between the wide open spaces of California and the dense urban tissue around London. Here I’d expect to see the kind of lonely dead-end places at the ends of roads than run nowhere, where people might drive to in order to dump rubbish or a corpse, commit adultery or stage an illegal fight. But his are generally clean and tidy and very open, often with distant horizons and lights, more a world to be discovered than one to be feared. Or perhaps it is more a difference in our personalities more than in the landscape.
Of course I immediately thought about other fine night images – such as Robert Adams in his ‘Summer Nights‘, (1985) which do include a couple which are illuminated, I think, by the headlights of a car. Stallworth’s work is perhaps even more precise but also more limited in scope, but there are a number of pictures I find extremely interesting. If, like me, you are unlikely to get to Fresno, you can enjoy them on-line on the photographer’s web site, which also has a colour series, ‘Everywhere/Nowhere‘ which explores the generic nature of much modern urban architecture and landscape.