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This body of work developed over a period of time while driving across the highways of America.
With senses dulled by the innate monotony of interstate driving, the ubiquitous and indistinguishable fast food-gas station-convenience store hybrids, the visual melting together of the byways into one vast median American landscape, my interest and attention were captured by cargo trucks.
Over a number of hours, engaged in the game of advance and retreat with enormous 18-wheelers, I began to pay particular attention to the materials they carried, the array of industrial goods that support “this American life”*.
I began to see these cargo trucks as a pivot point for art and culture. Interested in interjecting chance as the editorial agent, I held my camera up as we passed, taking random shots, uncertain of what I would capture in the frame. In some instances, the speed with which the vehicles were traveling results in a blur of color and shape, a clearly unfocused vision. At other times I arrested an odd perspective, an unexpected form, an irregular field of color and line.
These photographs afford a means of seizing the vitality of an instant from a sweeping sensory field. They are representative of the way in which we experience daily life -- moments of heightened perception extracted from the vast flood of visual and sensory information that besieges us.
Susan White
2007
*Thanks to Ira Glass of NPR, this phrase undoubtedly belongs to him.
Click on each title for a larger view of the images below. A still larger image can be viewed by clicking on the individual images.
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