"Rocket Science"
The Cold War rocket ship playgrounds in a post Cold War United States
Within these disappearing mass produced Cold War era rocket centered environments of the United States lies a political model that our atomic inheritance can be held close in the same utopian land as the fantasy of space exploration in a child’s dream.
Provoked by an anthropological desire to commit to the practice of hunting down the same object of flight associated with both war and the exploration of the universe and photographing it in whatever frozen air, heat dome, calm, or smoke filled sky was surrounding it, the process of creating a visual narrative became as regimented to me as continually asking the crucial question of how much of a utopia is this really? Who’s utopia is it and where does the United States stand now as a nation with regard to the catastrophically evolving infrastructures in which these rockets were originally installed in the mid 20th century throughout Mississippi, New York, Texas, Nevada, Michigan, California, and the list goes on. Through the discipline of making each of these images with an 8 x 10” view camera and film over the course of 4 presidential administrations and 20 years of criss-crossing the country a visual leitmotif slowly emerged in my studio at home and the questions began to pile up even more so. What is the our relationship with other countries? What is the agenda of our political leaders who manipulate the mechanics of government and relentlessly challenge and dictate the current narratives surrounding science, ideology, autonomy, the future, and home?
The Cold War rocket ship playgrounds in a post Cold War United States
Within these disappearing mass produced Cold War era rocket centered environments of the United States lies a political model that our atomic inheritance can be held close in the same utopian land as the fantasy of space exploration in a child’s dream.
Provoked by an anthropological desire to commit to the practice of hunting down the same object of flight associated with both war and the exploration of the universe and photographing it in whatever frozen air, heat dome, calm, or smoke filled sky was surrounding it, the process of creating a visual narrative became as regimented to me as continually asking the crucial question of how much of a utopia is this really? Who’s utopia is it and where does the United States stand now as a nation with regard to the catastrophically evolving infrastructures in which these rockets were originally installed in the mid 20th century throughout Mississippi, New York, Texas, Nevada, Michigan, California, and the list goes on. Through the discipline of making each of these images with an 8 x 10” view camera and film over the course of 4 presidential administrations and 20 years of criss-crossing the country a visual leitmotif slowly emerged in my studio at home and the questions began to pile up even more so. What is the our relationship with other countries? What is the agenda of our political leaders who manipulate the mechanics of government and relentlessly challenge and dictate the current narratives surrounding science, ideology, autonomy, the future, and home?
