Andrew Phelps: Higley
Sunday, August 26, 2007
(from “Higley”)
© Andrew Phelps
I keep coming back to a few of Andrew Phelps‘ photographs from Higley, Arizona - a series which he titles, simply, Higley.
Andrew explains the project:
Week by week, a township, once at the center of a farming expanse, is steadily loosing ground to the exploding metropolis known as the “greater Phoenix area”. Two-lane, dirt-shouldered, rough paved roads with names like Ellsworth, Ray, or Pecos are being widened and annexed by entrance drives to bedroom communities with promising names like “Heritage Springs” or “Sunset Haven“
Feed lots and grain silos have been replaced by strip malls and fast-food chains. Track-housing subdivisions are replacing homesteads founded after WW2 by service-men who came to build airplanes and stayed to grow citrus, cotton, alfalfa and corn, or to tend dairy-farms. Forced to sell out due to inflated property taxes and the urban encroachment, these vast lots of land, along with their history are loosing the battle against a homogeneous America. These photographs of Higley and the surrounding towns of Gilbert, Chandler and Queen Creek are an on-going documentation of this micro-cosmos of globalization.
While flipping through a copy of Andrew’s book, I wonder, would enough passes through the gorgeous photographs eventually allow one to question the way in which the photographer chooses to “preserve” this place?
Preservation, a topic I deal with in some of my own work, lends itself to the medium of photography. The camera has a way of preserving a memory, a place and time - or, this, we’ve chosen to believe.
I began thinking about Andrew’s aesthetic choices, his subjects. What are these photographs really saying about globalization? What does Higley, Arizona mean to this larger activity? At first, I wasn’t so sure.
(from “Higley”)
© Andrew Phelps
(from “Higley”)
© Andrew Phelps
(from “Higley”)
© Andrew Phelps
I feel as though the photography world has recently been hit hard with an abundance anthropological studies that are in this very vein. However, as I think about my own proposition, I realize these photographic documents have gone on since, well, the invent of the camera. And the more I look at Andrew’s images, the more I agree with the kind things Mr. Soth (surprise!) had to say about the book:
Why do we take pictures? To preserve memories? Stop time? Tell stories? Andrew Phelps’ photographs of Higley, Arizona do all of these things. But most of all they make me want to go out into the world. Stripped of the usual tendency toward cynical sensationalism, Phelps’ pictures depict Higley with a mixture of clarity and affection. After looking at this remarkable book, I feel like going outside to chat with my neighbor.
See more from this series on Andrew’s website or, even better, get yourself a copy of the book here.
August 27th, 2007 at 5:20 am
i´m quite glad about this post as i like andrew phelp´s work a lot and we actually are confronted continously with those questions that were mentioned in your post. in november he will have two shows here in linz where i´m living at the moment and i´m looking forward to them!
August 27th, 2007 at 8:56 am
No surprise Soth likes it, the last portrait could be signed by him without problems.
August 27th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
You are right…preservation is at the heart of photographic practice today. It is the birth and death of photographers.
August 29th, 2007 at 1:39 am
Thanks again for turning me on to another photographer. These days my face is always in history books, so I’m not getting the contemporary photo edification I need, but I can just come to your blog to catch up.
September 1st, 2007 at 12:53 pm
I’ve enjoyed seeing Andrew’s work. Thanks for pointing it out. On a recent trip through the greater Mesa/Scottsdale area, I was simply shocked at the way one community bled into another. Miles of “gated communities” along the way broken up only by the occasional mini mall. The highway gets extended another few miles whenever a new suburb is needed.
On a slightly lighter note; is that the portrait of Kramer from Seinfeld episode on the wall of the resturant? Always wondered where it ended up.
January 8th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
There is a great interview in the new Photo Eye with Andrew Phelps about his book Higley. He talks about the influence of the New Topographics movement as well, which is quite interesting.
January 8th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
[...] are some of Andrew’s images from the book Higley and here is a link to Shane Lavalette’s blog with a post about Higley with some photos and part of an interview. Good [...]