Transitional Landscapes deals with land development and loss of natural landscape. Land as a commodity with no connection to the past or natural integration of one life style into another. Housing development on a massive scale consumes whole communities with no connection to its past. The automobile demands bigger and more accessible roadways, and in the process alienates and divides communities.
In this work I have taken a direction toward weaving together the past and the present. I am recording the transition of County Road 18 in Eden Prairie, Minnesota from a 2-lane winding road into a major 2-lane highway. The road has changed over the years and was primarily a rural road through farm country up until the 1980's when the farmland was sold off quickly for suburban development. The increase in traffic on the road and the plans for development of suburbs further out pushed the passage of a new highway through. This highway significantly changed the character of the landscape and divided the community on either side. The intent of my video is to "collapse time" by showing both the past and present together. When I ride on that heavily trafficked road of today I remember when I played on the same road as a child when there was very little traffic. The past has been replaced but memories still live.
There may be other ways to accomplish this feeling of past and present, but for this work the video offers the best solution for creating a sensation of both worlds simultaneously. I was lucky to have film shot by my father of the family on the farm in the 1950's. The film was transferred to video and from there I blended video that I shot of the road as it is today.
In another version I have added interviews with people who have lived along this road at various times and have witnessed changes in the landscape. I like to present the video as part of an installation the resembles a booth at a State Fair - a shed type structure with a window through which one can view the video.
The still photos are created in Photoshop. The road ran along one side of the farm and seemed like a part of it. I superimposed a sectional map from the highway department onto photos and marked where the road was in relationship. These are more memory pieces....they remind me of how we look at photos and point to areas and say there's so and so or "there's the road". The idea of past and present is interesting to me. We see the world in front of us but our emotions are driven by memory and the world that we have inhabited throughout our lives.
I am always struck by how difficult it is to be objective about landscape. Memory of place always enters in and affects the interpretation. Perhaps this is more true in the late 20th century where changes in the land are sometimes monumental. I think about landscape artists of the past, the English landscape painters, the Luminists (Hudson River School), and Monet. There is a strong bond between them and the subject of nature. For myself I can't just accept that it won't change before my eyes.