AMERICAN PORTFOLIO

SERIES : AMERICAN POSTCARDS

The project concern place representation, cultural identity and nationhood. It seeks to explore master narratives and depiction of the American landscape and its architecture.

My view of the American landscape was one of a vast, flat, sparsely populated surface with rail crossings, wooden houses, big cars, and neon motel signs appearing in foggy, semi-rural surroundings. This view was cultivated by movies, tour guides, and by the aesthetics of commercial landscape photography. In my quest of seeking what should be regarded as a typical American landscape, I usually encounter architectural structures less pictorial, more universal, yet more complex and, so to speak, more dystopian than those I had in mind.

This realization has made me question the identity of the place and in general the identity of any place. My work reopens a conversation on place representation, the spirit of place, national identity, topography and geography.

AMERICAN PORTFOLIO

SERIES : AMERICAN POSTERS

The project concern place representation, cultural identity and nationhood. It seeks to explore master narratives and depiction of the American landscaping and architecture. Wandering around American cities and suburban areas my best observation is that everything seems much bigger. Tall buildings, organized nature. Not streets, but highways, not sea but the ocean. How do we really decide the scale of things? I narrow them down with my 6×7 frame. A road, a motel in the outskirts, a summer house, a hotel by the ocean, a parking lot, many parking lots, and neon signs…Everything looks man-made, hence the bigger scale. The search of the genuine American landscape is futile. Creating a version of it crafted within a personal sense of place, universal cultural symbols and digital pictorial practices is the recipe for this subjective Place-making.