PERIPHERIES: Landscapes on the Edge
The specific site I have been photographing is the changing landscape near my home, the ever-expanding suburbia near the Southern California Coast. These panoramic images with their long view of the horizon capture a distinct sense of place and time -- on the edge of the West, at the end of the century, near the turn of the millennium. They are witness to our growing awareness that the fate of nature and culture are intertwined, a fact that has been made more clear by advanced science and by photographs of the earth taken from outer space. At the end of the 20th century we have been provided with a new global vision and sense of landscape.
Exploring the edges and peripheries of what was once considered to be our frontier, these photographs document some of the tensions and duality's present in society's complex relationship to nature. While we see recorded in these images the invasion of virgin territory by technology, the breakdown and the controlled destruction; we also see an ordered stillness or beauty and a timeless sense of the elemental or monumental, often accompanied by a sense of loss. Here the man-made and the natural become merged and the landscape must be read and questioned not only as geography but also as a cultural phenomenon and as a metaphor for the spirit of the times in the late 20th century American West.
Laurie Brown , 1997
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