Book project coming along!

I know I have been way over due on updating this blog as of late. Recently my musical ambitions and the general craziness of day to day life have gotten the best of me. One glimmer of photo progress is that slowly but surely I have been working on self publishing a book of photo's from my New Mexico project and I'm on the final stretch!

I Discovered Phil Underdown.....

http://www.philunderdown.com/index.html

A New Level of Scary....

My New Emerging Project

Untitled, Christopher Moss , 2013

Untitled Grid #1, Christopher Moss , 2013

Riverside Factory, Christopher Moss , 2013

Untitled Grid #2 , Christopher Moss , 2013

  

    So the other evening I was debating on which scene's i wanted to photograph, what interested me within them and what direction my night project was going. I realized that the same methods I employed in my altered landscape images held true thus far with my night photographs. This posed somewhat of a dilemma for me.  If what I was looking for at night was essentially what I was looking for during the day, whats the point in having 2 projects.....? Why not combine them?

    

    Another issue arose within my deliberations upon location. It's much easier to roam about intuitively during the day looking for altered landscapes within my allotted confines of Southeastern Pennsylvania, not so much at night where it feels somewhat aimless. My current group of  night images have been taken fairly close to home, places I see when traveling home from work or to and from friends house's. These locations and their appeal have been somewhat exhausted. 

    

    Recently I picked up a book called "Down the Susquehanna to the Chesapeake" by Jack Brubaker looking for historical reference and context to the landscapes I have been photographing. Great book by the way. It got me thinking about the town I grew up in, Marietta, and the surrounding towns that were once booming centers for trade and culture on the east coast and have been forgotten to history. 

    

    This sparked an idea that I feel has a lot of potential and is divergent from the night and day landscapes of my Altered Landscapes project. I thought about photographing exclusively in black and white and focusing specifically on small towns along the Susquehanna river at night. These places lend themselves to the historical aesthetic of black and white images. These towns and their infrastructure hark back to industrial times as though you have stepped into a time warp. There is a definite sense of nostalgia for me as well when I am walking the streets at night. I feel that each towns character becomes pronounced and there is a certain solitude and historical heritage that emerges from the shadow of night. 

    I am not sure what directions these images will take me. I'm not sure if stand alone images will speak as well as the presence of multiple images in grids. Whether I should incorporate the towns people or strictly their  empty streets and industry. Either way it feels good to find a thread that I can follow into another adventure and visual experience. Shown above are images from Wrightsville between the hours of 11:30 and 1:30 on a Wednesday night. I will definitely return to this town as well as other locations as I make my way up the Susquehanna.  I'm excited and curious as to what comes of this new project......

" I do regard photography as an extremely difficult act. I believe the achievement of a work that is evocative, mysterious and at the same time realistic is a great one and a rare one, and perhaps almost sometimes an accident. Its akin to hunting in the same way that your using a machine and your shooting actually something, and you are shooting to kill. If you get what you wanted that's a kill, that's a bulls eye."
Walker Evans

 "Divisions in Orange"

from the series "Altered Landscapes - Southeastern Pennsylvania"

by Christopher Moss

 "Forgotten Space's - S Curve"

from the series "Altered Landscapes - Southeastern Pennsylvania"

by Christopher Moss

 "Model Community"

from the series "Altered Landscapes - Southeastern Pennsylvania"

by Christopher Moss

Unknown Trailer Park , Shrewsberry PA , Winter 2013

from the series "Altered Landscapes - Southeastern Pennsylvania"

by Christopher Moss

Utility Shrine, Shrewsbury PA, 2013

from the series "Altered Landscapes- Southeastern Pennsylvania"

by- Christopher Moss

Untitled, York PA, 2013

from the series "Altered Landscapes- Southeastern Pennsylvania"

by - Christopher Moss

Movie Theatre, Elizabethtown PA

from the series "Night Works"

by Christopher Moss

Untitled, February 20th 

from the series "Night Works"

by Christopher Moss

Arriving Train

from the series "Night Works"

by Christopher Moss

I discovered Lars Haberg

 The Barrier. Bethlehem. July 2011

Weekly demonstration against The Barrier in Bil’in. Palestinians, internationals and Israelis participate in this demonstration every Friday. The Barrier (a fence) is seen in the background. The Israeli army uses tear gas and skunk to disperse the demonstrators. February 2010

Bedouin boy watching the building of the Carmel settlement on land that his community claims ownership over. South Hebron Hills. April 2010

Since 2001, Israel through its military and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, has uprooted, burnt and destroyed more than 548,000 olive trees that belong to Palestinians. The uprooting of the ancient olive trees, as a byproduct of war, has had tremendous effects on the Palestinian agriculture, economy, and identity. June 2011

Silwan, East Jerusalem. Many of these buildings have a standing demolition order; the municipality wants to clear the area and build a park for recreational purposes. More than 1,000 Palestinians are at risk of losing their homes. Since the year 2000, more than 1,100 Palestinian homes have been demolished in East Jerusalem. Palestinians build illegally because it’s almost impossible for them to obtain a building permit in Jerusalem. They either have to build illegally, or move out of the city. The estimated number of outstanding demolitions is up to 20,000. March 2010

http://mystudents.me/category/lars-haberg/ 

I discovered Zoe Naumen

Fight Party 2 , 2004

Burning Scooter , 2004

26th & Magnolia , 2004

Plan 9, Gilman St , 2003

http://finitefoto.com/zoe-nauman

Stream Following Rt. 83 South, York

from the series "Altered Landscapes - Southeastern Pennsylvania"

by Christopher Moss

Untitled , York PA 2013

from the series " Altered Landscapes - Southeastern Pennsylvania"

by Christopher Moss

Side Street following Rt. 83 York

from the series "Altered Landscapes - Southeastern Pennsylvania"

by Christopher Moss

 

On Bill Owens

"Owens’ photographs belong to an American aesthetic tradition of art that explores the intersection of everyday life and theatricality. Like the paintings of Edward Hopper, the photographs of Walker Evans and Diane Arbus, and the short stories of John Cheever and Raymond Carver, Owens’ photographs find unexpected beauty and mystery within the American vernacular. This collision between normality and strangeness transforms the American landscape into a place of wonder and anxiety."

"Owens is among the generation of photographers, including Robert Adams, William Eggleston, Steven Shore, and Joel Sternfeld, who used the tradition of documentary photography to explore the complexities and contradictions of the American landscape. To varying degrees, they used an objective style of photography in an effort to locate a perfect tension between banality and beauty, domesticity and nature, criticism and admiration."

Written by Gregory Crewdson in American Suburban X
http://www.americansuburbx.com/2010/09/bill-owens-leisure-particular-kind-of.html

Industrial Park, York Pennsylvania 2013

from the series "Altered Landscapes, Southeastern Pennsylvania"

by Christopher Moss

Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs

    "Rock and Roll adolescent hoodlums storm the streets of all nations. They rush into the Louvre and throw acid on the Mona Lisa's face. They open zoo's, insane asylums, prisons, burst water mains with air hammers, chop the floor out of passenger plane lavatories, shoot out lighthouse's , file elevator cables to one thin wire, turn sewers into water supply, throw sharks and sting rays, electric eels and candiru into swimming pools .......(Candiru, look it up...) in nautical costumes ram the Queen Mary full speed into New York Harbor, play chicken with passenger planes and buses, rush into hospitals in white coats carrying saws and axes and scalpels 3 feet long, throw paralytics out of iron lungs, administer injections with bicycle pumps ..... and they shit on the floor of the United Nations and wipe their ass with treaties, pacts and alliances."

The Classics. Robert Adams. New Topographics

New Topographics Mobile Homes, Jefferson County, Colorado, 1973, copyright Robert Adams.

Epic Failure....

The Van Buren Boys - Out Tonight

I've been into this band lately....check em out!

Joel Sternfeld - "American Prospects" Review

"It is an unspeakable force, lurking invisibly, powerful, cultural, American.....It is about a country convinced of its independence and freedom, but that when photographed appears chained to a set of principles and dreams powerfully manifested in its architecture and in the lives its people have chosen to lead."

"The subjects of these pictures are varied but the hand of the photographer persists throughout, providing a consistent perspective so that the book never once feels haphazard. That perspective manages to document the weird mixture of tragic boredom, achievement and hope that composes the contemporary American experience. The pictures are shot with a sort of attached indifference, meaning that the subjects, composition, and lighting are all carefully chosen, but a documentary quality establishes distance between viewer and subject. This space allows a feeling of wrongness to come through, one that seems to permeate these photographs, not by direct instigation but through an implicit voyeurism. The wrongness is as apparent as its source is difficult to identify, so that looking at these pictures is similar to watching a David Lynch film."

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2012/12/review-joel-sternfeld-american-prospects-2012.html 

Review by Sergio Leone  

Winter Morning Dew, Rural Housing Development;

 January 2013

16x24

Christopher Moss

I Discovered Rory Mulligan....

From the series "Freddie"

From the series "Cindy Timberwolf"

From the series "To Much Future"

From the series "Cindy Timberwolf"

http://www.rorymulligan.com 

Untitled, from the series Night Work
December 2012
Christopher Moss