Suburban Observations by Nathan Wirth

Nathan Wirth – The suburbs often feel somewhat soulless, even heartless – in spite of the fact that they often have, rather curiously, so many trees lining their streets and decorating the yards of their cookie cutter houses as if part of a lamely-conceived deception to fool us into thinking they are in harmony with the forces of nature.

The suburbs are neither city, nor nature, but something acceptably unacceptable in-between the two, a stretch of occupied, built-upon land that encroaches on the city and bounds the edges of the countryside.

These curious monotonies stem from such samenesses … such unoriginalities of design and order … as if everyone just gave up on the possibility of expressing anything unique or different or clever or challenging and just settled for what was easiest and quickest and most likely to receive little complaint from those who couldn’t care less about such things in the first place. This little series seeks to capture little slices of beauty among such repetitious ubiquities.  I captured all of these images during early evening walks around the suburban neighborhood I now live in.  I used an infrared-converted camera; each image is approximately a one second to three second exposure.  Some of the time, I let the movement from my fast gait sway the camera held in my hands, and at other times I intentionally swayed the camera to and fro and up and down and over and back– but always as I was walking.  In other words, I wanted these observations to be recorded as part of the many walks I took while collecting this series, the walk taking me wherever it is that I was going and the observations simply caught along the way with no planning.  For even in the plasticity of such designs, little silent slices of beauty dance often unnoticed. [Official Website]