Lewis and Clark Trail Photographic Survey

The L&C Trail Survey is about change, history, and our cultural relationship with
nature. The landscape littered with contemporary culture, would be an appropriate
phrase to describe the visual content in almost all the images. The project enabled
me to merge interests in landscape and social documentary photography. By
combining these separate stylistic approaches, narratives can be constructed which
address issues of culture and production, leisure and labor, interpretation, and history
of place. Compositionally, much of the work is influenced by the tradition of formalist
landscape photography. On closer examination, however, the formalist tradition is
subverted by subject choices that derive meaning, not from an idealized nature that is
segregated, but one that is drawn from the banal and culturally integrated.

Using information from the original L&C journals, actual sites associated with the
expedition were located and photographed during the same season, and when possible,
under similar weather conditions. The primary camera format for the survey was the
6X17cm panorama. The panoramic views excel in describing the landscape and
providing viewers with a sense of place. Exhibition design combines primary-source
journal excerpts with the photographs. The combination of historical text with the images
creates a unique contemporary document, establishing a narrative spanning 200 years
of change along the L&C Trail.

As products of the Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson’s Corps of Discovery employed the
latest technology. The expedition was the proving ground for several new inventions.
Among the more exotic was Meriwether Lewis’s portable soup, the airgun, and his failed
collapsible boat. In keeping with the technological spirit of the Corps, the chosen process
for making prints for the L&C Survey utilizes the digital Lambda printer. The digital process
excels at generating high resolution, large scale prints for exhibition. The process employs
the most permanent color photographic print material currently available, and produces
multiple prints with a high degree of consistency.

In an 1813 memoir of Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “. . .honest, disinterested,
liberal, of sound understanding and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous that whatever he should
report would be as certain as if seen by ourselves. . .” The L&C Trail Photographic Survey
was modeled after Jefferson’s quote, taking into consideration the politics of my choices—of
subject, framing, and timing.