Rowena Dring

Western Lands

Every so often Discovery Channel runs an advert to encourage tourist to America with the slogan “You’ve seen the movie, now visit the set” against a backdrop of the vast landscapes of the Arizona high desert. Intrigued by the idea of the whole of the west of America as one huge movie set in 2006 I took a road trip through California and Arizona, driving two and a half thousand miles with the NY curator/writer and critic, Joseph Wolin. The photographs I took on this trip are the source material for my new body of works that looks at the landscapes of the American West.

Images of the landscape of the west of America and ideas of the nation are deeply intertwined. Ask any US president what is his favorite movie, and they will all answer with a Western; for John F Kennedy it was Bad Day at Black Rock, for Clinton, Nixon and George W Bush it was High Noon. The American West is a region that is defined by memory and nostalgia, making it a symbol of what was irrevocably lost.

In his book “Skyline, The Narcissistic City” Hubert Damisch reminds us that whilst this is the west of America, anywhere west of the great lakes is actually the east, LA being the first orient.

Rowena Dring 2008