Under Construction

Conceptualized as alternative landscapes, these prints provide unsentimental overhead views of America in the early 21st century. “Tierra” displays a small town built over an enormous oilfield; “under construction” shows new homes accumulating around a partially completed shopping center; “embedded” shows four trailer parks surrounded by a mass-produced residential community; and “subdivided” depicts a new neighborhood emerging across a wide panorama.

I reconfigured these images with Photoshop (changing colors, repositioning streets and houses, removing unwanted details) to create entirely new digital landscapes. Once printed on paper, I manually folded them into evenly distributed zig-zag ridges. When presented in accordion folds, the imagery appears to change as viewers see it from different vantage points.

The digital adjustments engage viewers in another way, giving them a sense that something is not quite right. Note the unnatural symmetry in “under construction” with the left side recurring in a slightly altered mirror image on the right. The rectangular boundaries of the trailer parks in “embedded” contrast markedly with the chaotic, even shape-shifting streets inside. The digital adjustments in “subdivided” evoke upheaval as a new neighborhood comes into being.