Eric Landes

As with most people, Landes' sense of place has largely been determined by vehicular travel. Roads, streets and the car were the means by which he understood his surroundings. After he got his first dog as an adult, Landes' sense of place or personal geography began to change. As he walked the neighborhoods that surround his home, he began to get a better sense of his own world. Landes started to apprehend the proximity's of housing developments and woods and features of the natural and human made landscape that had largely escaped his attention before. As fall forced his evening walks later into the night, as the natural light faded and human-made illumination made up the difference, his sense of place changed again. The world of light with shadow became a world of shadow with light. Streetlights with their orange or blue hues created broad swaths of competing color that held back the night only so long before fading to dramatic punitions or porch lights or the occasional light from a window.

As a photographer, Landes began to see aesthetic potential in these new experiences. Photographing at night became a way for him to discuss our knowledge of our own place, The unfamiliarity that comes as a consequence of changing light begins to get at how few of us really have a sense of our personal geography... how few of us really "know" where we live, what surrounds us, and what lies even a short distance away.

The change in pace and distance of experience wrought by Landes' walks along with the narrowed illumination forced him into a different relationship with his personal discovery, but also invite the viewer to explore his or her own world; to seek out the unfamiliar in the familiar so that a greater sense of the whole is achieved.