ross – New Landscape Photography

All of these pictures were taken within two miles of my suburban home in Evanston, Illinois. Evanston and other nearby suburbs are often used as a backdrop in popular films, notably John Hughes’s movies, to represent typical American life. Our mental representations of American suburbs are tied to our ideas of safety, conformity, and quality of life. It’s not my intention to change these notions, but to explore and complicate their contours through pictures.

— Maxwell Ross, Evanston, Illinois, USA

December 9, 2013November 13, 2013

Max Ross

www.MaxwellRoss.com

Clearfield is a portrait of a Pennsylvania town in the process of losing its local businesses to competition from international superstores, such as Walmart. Clearfield is an excellent example of what is lost culturally when town centers are abandoned for megastores, because of its long history and uniquely American roots. Here you can find pristine examples of early American homes and WPA buildings, 50’s era movie theaters, and remnants of hundred-year-old unions and associations. Furthermore, these institutions’ history continues to play a vital role in the lives of the citizens of this rural manufacturing town to this day. Unfortunately, if the town center economically fails, the architecture where so much of its values reside will likely go with it, to be replaced by the curiously a-historical environments of mega-marts.

— Max Ross, Evanston, Illinois