The Road Above.  2016-2018

When I was sixteen my father taught me to drive on a road named the Valley Parkway in the Rocky River Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks. Two years later we returned to the Valley Parkway for a drive in my first Volkswagen and, sitting in the passenger seat, he enjoyed the experience of staring upwards at the passing trees and sky framed by the VW's large open sunroof. Decades later these emotional memories became the foundation for The Road Above.

I searched for a small, light weight camera that could easily be attached to my car's roof and record the view overhead.  I chose a GoPro camera because it met the criteria but importantly it also reminded me of the small experimental wooden box cameras used in the 1830's by one of Photography's inventors, William Henry Fox Talbot. Because his little cameras had no viewing system Talbot speculatively scattered them about his house and grounds to see what might result and they produced wonderful unexpected pictures of trees and bushes with a spontaneity and wildness I have long admired.

I discovered the GoPro, in addition to video, could also generate small, sharp 2MB still photographs that had unexpectedly beautiful, visually rich digital textures when made into large prints. The GoPro also featured an internal intervalometer which allowed me to program the timing rate for its still images.  With the camera mounted on the roof of my car and facing upwards, the intervalometer's exposures resulted in surprising compositions every ten seconds as I drove slowly along the curvy woodland road.  The resulting photographs had the unplanned, spontaneous framing and the wildness I admired in Talbot's early pictures.

For the final step in the process I used a panorama software program to merge selected sequential photo files into a composite picture that alluded to the movement of my car through the forest. The final photographs include a data line on the bottom center of each image noting the date and time duration of the exposures. The twenty seven photographs in the series The Road Above span the unfolding time of four seasons in the MetroPark from August 20, 2016 to July 2, 2017.

The Road Above 2016-2018

Twenty-seven photographic pigment prints on 100% rag paper,  each 20” x 36”

1. 08.20.2016, 09:54:20-09:55:20