Nevada State Randy, Route 179, (Randy) copyright Douglas Stockdale
Reading the recent (2015) October issue of PDN magazine, which is their annual photobook issue, I found myself thinking back to my real first photographic project, a series of roadside remembrance memorials. As a quick recap, it is a series that I became very fascinated by in late 2006. This project gained real momentum in 2007, as I made note of each various roadside memorial we came across and I quickly tried to figure out when and how to photograph each one. A black & white version of the project, titled In Passing, was subsequently published by LensWork magazine in their Jan/Feb 2008 #74 issue. I subsequently self-published a hard cover book-dummy of In Passing using Blurb (this book-dummy was juried into a self-publishing photobook exhibition in Portland, OR) and one image, Winter Field, Route 30, Indiana was published in Brooks Jensen’s Looking at Images in 2014.
During this time, I read Nathalie Herschdorfer’s book Afterwards (Contemporary Photography Confronting the Past) and began rethinking my earlier decision to convert my photographs to Black & White and that using the original color could be relevant. Meanwhile I am still photographing roadside remembrance memorials, but now staying with Color.
So I am now back full circle, thinking about the series again in Black & White. And reconciled that the project should maybe have a new combination name; so the interim working title is In Passing – Lest I Forget.
In the next couple of weeks, I plan to write more about the continuing metamorphose of this photographic series.
Cheers,
Doug
Singular Images 