Suburban Landscape – Rancho Santa Margarita

Rancho Santa Margarita, CA copyright 2010 Douglas Stockdale

One of the benefits of spending a lot of my time in Europe is that when I return to Southern California, the landscape and terrain takes on a subtle strangeness. I believe that my assumptions have been disrupted and I start to see my surrounderings from another perspective and maybe what I have taken for granted. It is not neccessary to travel away from your immediate surroundings to look and see it without your cultural blinders, but for me at least, it does help.

Reading the recent Larry Sultan photobook Katherine Avenue has re-awakened an earlier photo project of mine that resulted in a short-lived photobook, a project that I knew that at sometime I would come back to. Perhaps that time is now.

Best regards, Douglas