Brush Creek Ranch 2015
These works are process-generated landscape studies created from photographs made in the spring of 2015 while an artist-in-residence at the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts at Brush Creek Ranch in Wyoming.
Brush Creek Ranch is a historic 30,000 acre working ranch in Wyoming that sits in the heart of the Platte River Valley between the Sierra Madre Mountain range and Medicine Bow National Forest. In this Rocky Mountain wilderness Brush Creek Ranch was founded in the late 1800s and remains a working cattle ranch.
This works examines and explores the landscape of Brush Creek Ranch. I made digital photographs while wandering that landscape and also collected objects I found while doing so. I brought the found objects into my studio at Brush Creek Ranch and made digital photographs of them there.
Using a computer with Photoshop, the final pieces are constructed by combining one landscape photograph with one photograph of the found objects. For me they are both familiar and strange, faithful representations of my experiences during the residencies.
This work is typical of the research I began when I moved from analog photography to digital photography. I am interested in the dynamics of that change. What has changed? What remains the same? By making work in established photographic genres – in this case “landscape” – I am able to examine and question the impact of digital technology on the medium of photography.
