John Kane
Artist Statement
The Last Road Trip Before the Pandemic. It was a desert trip, the latest of many, contributing to a long and continuing project, at the end of 2019. There hasn’t been one since. Extended travel in the desert West has always been a mainstay for me, each tour of the arid lands both a creative reset and a continuation of vision, a path to perception and coherence, a perspective-adjuster, a course-corrector, an expectation-setter.rnrnCommon stuff looks different in the desert, or maybe I just see it better, with more clarity. I relish the spare desert topography and the pronounced physical and cultural geography, the frequent irony on display. In the desert, things don’t get entangled with one another, they stay themselves and stand on their own. In the desert, ordinary things have a way of becoming iconic It has been a long two years without the desert, and I am in need of a reset.
Technical note: photographs on medium-format film, square format, lightly edited, printed on fine matte washi papers.
John Kane | Issaquah, WA