Infrastructure: Highway Deconstructed

The altered landscape has been an integral element of my photographic practice. For the past eleven-years, I’ve been creating images that explore the activities associated with the process of transforming the landscape by highway construction.

     The altered landscape has been an integral element of my photographic practice. For the past nine-years, I’ve been creating images that explore the activities and artifacts associated with the process of transforming the landscape by the construction underway for an enormous highway infrastructure project. My goals are very different from anyone else working on the new I-4 highway running through Central Florida. The engineers and construction workers are focused on weight loads and distribution, gravity, traffic flow and water runoff. I’m exploring the construction process from a perspective of re-interpretation and transformation.

   The aesthetic strategy I weave into the imagery would normally be associated with the way photographers have approached national parks like Yosemite or Yellowstone with the purpose of ‘idealizing’ the subject. I’m intrigued with the idea of producing images using rebar, concrete and dirt to create beautiful seductive photographs to draw attention to the effects of our interaction with our surroundings. Using aesthetics this way can function as a political statement.  The complexity of the construction process is experienced as a Surreal undertaking and is included in the visual language of the photographs. 

     I’m reminded of Margaret Bourke-White when she said, “... industrial forms were all the more beautiful because they were never designed to be beautiful. They had a simplicity of line that came from their direct application of purpose. Industry... had evolved an unconscious beauty – often a hidden beauty that was waiting to be discovered"      

      There are serious environmental considerations to include when designing massive infrastructure projects. These photographs are made in Florida but large construction projects that impact wetlands and animal migration patterns are being built all over the world. Significant efforts are being made to address environmental concerns. In Florida, the US 27 Venus Wildlife Crossing project involving a 4-lane divided highway near the town of Venus to help protect wildlife from vehicle accidents including the critically endangered Florida panther and the black bear. These tragic events highlight the urgent need for action to protect both animals and drivers. The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing in California now spans the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills near Los Angeles. (Completion planned for 2026)

      The process of making these photographs occur as collaborative activities with individuals I only know through the evidence of their actions. I incorporate the actions of others to re-contextualize our effect on the land.