Michael Froio

MichaelFroio.com

The Pennsylvania Railroad was one of the most storied institutions in American history, operating the largest railroad in the US for over a century. The PRR, as it was known, developed infrastructure, engineering standards and traffic systems that still carry trains today on a system that evolved continually through its long history.

Following its 1968 collapse, the physical face of the PRR network has changed considerably. This once unified system has been carved by various successors into separate if interdependent, corridors for freight and passenger operations across the Mid Atlantic. Though gone nearly half a century, its remains provide visual clues of how the “Standard Railroad of the World” operated, and its contributions to the American way of life.

Inspired by the work of William H. Rau, commissioned in the 1890’s to document and promote the Pennsylvania Railroad and its destinations, the From the Main Line project is a contemporary exploration of the landscape the PRR shaped. It examines both the inhabited landscape developed along the railroad while celebrating the engineering marvel of the Road itself, first undertaken over 150 years ago.

Photographs provide two distinct views by contextualizing the railroad within the landscape while also simulating the experience of the passenger, as if from a railcar window. The story of how the PRR shaped the development of the United States is told by illustrat­ing its transitioning landscape, uncovering its hidden layers of growth, by following the decline and rebirth of small towns, industrial areas and city terminals whose fortunes once depended solely on those of this singular, once-mighty transportation system.

— Michael Froio, Williamstown, New Jersey, USA

Peter Latner

PeterLatner.com

The beauty of the plains is not just in themselves but in the sky, in what you think when you look at them, and in what they are not.
— Ian Frazier, Great Plains

These pictures represent trips made between 2006 and 2016 to Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, and Wyoming. I went because I wanted to see the westward migration routes: the Oregon and Mormon Trails and the three great rivers—the Missouri, Platte and Yellowstone. The big rivers made me want to look at some smaller ones, so I stopped at, among others, the Heart, the Bad, the Musselshell, the Tongue, the Dismal and the Little Bighorn.

It wasn’t all history and lyrical names, which is good, because ideas or words rarely photograph well. I spent time and attention on interstate highways, which most travelers think of as roads but which seem to me more like places. And of course there were towns and cities and suburbs to photograph. Looking at almost any landscape is a good way to look at the people who live there.

Light on the Great Plains is something special. When we look for beauty or meaning, the easiest mistake we can make is to drive right past it. I’m a believer in the uncommon promise of the commonplace.

— Peter Latner, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

Ilona Schneider

IlonaSchneider.com

The series Landmarks, produced between 2012 and 2018, shows the entanglement of nature, land, labour, industry and technology in Tasmania (Australia), as it is characterised by big hydro-electric power stations, dams, water reservoirs, penstocks, power pylons and lines, mining operations (tin, iron), etc. In this work I also focus on the remnants and ruins of the original infrastructure put in place to facilitate the work on dams and mines, including now abandoned or dismantled construction camps and villages, where, however, we can now witness the emergence of natural growth. I am especially interested in the way industry and infrastructure, roads and waterways, were built into the land and shaped it to create the unique historical and inhabited human landscape of Tasmania. As such, my work explores photographic possibilities outside the stale opposition between wilderness photography (Ansel Adams or Peter Dombrovskis) and New Topographic photography (the Bechers or Wenders).

— Ilona Schneider, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

Ryan Parker

RyanParker.info

Photographs in this series look at the economic and environment motivations which have shaped the land. The title, Coping with the Landscape, refers to my fear of the state of the contemporary landscape – fear generated by the loss of humanity in the land that supports the movement of capital first, and the needs of the locality second. This series of photographs follows the intermediate zone, which crosses the borders between infrastructure space and domestic space, searching for a path through the land which is not prescribed. Illuminated by billboards and street lights, the storage containers and infrastructure create the boundaries of the land. Within that boundary, the instability of this human-made landscape emerges.   

— Ryan Parker, Bozeman, Montana, USA