“It is not just the stitched building that become hidden, but also the remnants of architecture that in turn become strange shrines populating a city-disused and unserviceable pieces of utilitarian function that have not been ordered into exile…”
“Visually and technically for photography, the season is something of a conundrum, it is firstly a phenomenon that catches our impassioned attentions but it is also incredibly loathsome to be captured on film…”
“Vandalism” is a way in which to authorize or sign off on a negation of agreement of form and intent. It is to suggest that at its heart, what vandalism does is to distort the fabric of time in appearance governed by the individual” Crypto-architecture is not purposeful on the plane of first person experience. […]
“Though the clues to what could be considered “absent” “voided” or “gone” are not to be entirely championed nor ignored, the work follows a circular format. It is an examination of place and home and the subject’s way of seeing the familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. This inquiry of Schmidt’s is adept if not deftly demonstrative.”
“the watchmaker must duly take an ever-present duty to keep the machinations from stalling and presenting the case for non-linearity”
“The utter faux-familiarity of these rooms, from the plastic painting on the wall to the synthetic bed spread made from all manner of recycled and threaded nylon from fish net stockings to actual fish netting makes one queasy”
‘While Ruwedel’s concise framing draws attention to the resemblance between one house and the next, it also compels us to reflect on the singular defeats that they portray, each one a small chip out of the American dream.’
“My work in the landscape is ultimately about human culture, not about nature. I always think of landscape as historical, or historicized; as not existing outside of history.”
Each image still serves as a living testament of sorts, but as winter approaches, I fear they will begin to form colonies of graves, for which, I have no answers.
There are almost no humans in Wender’s photos. I almost forget there’s a human behind the camera in a way that would never happen with other road trip photographers.
Mark Ruwedel is an artist who has been photographing American deserts and other remote locations for over 25 years. With an affinity for stark, barren landscapes that are otherwise uninhabited, Ruwedel found the desert and it soon became his primary field of inquiry. Influenced by photographers Lewis Baltz, Walker Evans and Robert Adams, Ruwedel’s […]
“The New Topographics has to some extent had the effect of ‘steamrollering’ people into believing that the American model was the progenitor of lots of current photographic approaches.”