In this series, titled Pearl Road, I draw upon memories to examine my relationship with the cultural and physical landscape of my youth. I was raised for the most part in a town of 700 people in rural Idaho and felt like an outsider after discovering I was gay in my early adolescence.
During my formative teenage years, I was faced with a choice, to conform to the traditional masculine culture of the Western United States – one defined by violence and extraction– or to run away and create my own sense of belonging. It is through this struggle that my relationship with the idea of place emerges, and I question the persistence of the mythology of the West. The landscape provided both solitude and escape when I was with lovers, but also made us extremely noticeable. It is this tension between ecstasy and fear that I hope to convey in my image-making.
Inspired by the structure of post-documentary approaches by photographers in the 2000s and the aesthetics of the New Topographics exhibition in 1976, the work is intended to meander alongside the vast landscape. Like a living diary, the arrangement of staged and found scenes expands upon emotionally charged memories of exploration of not only the land but also sexuality.
