John's Land

Artist book / hard cover / 27,5 x 20,5cm / 47 pages / b&w / Munken Lynx paper / Edition of 30 / signed / 2011

 

 

Concept and background

 

The idea for "John´s Land" came up during my DAAD scholarship in Las Vegas when a man who called himself John Green moved into the house where I was staying.

 

It pretty quickly became evident that he had a great talent to narrate when I at the time had an interest in the american dream or rather the american narrative and its key

elements.

He agreed to set up a story with me, containg certain elements and then improvise this "story of his life", while I audiotaped him.

 

I transcribed the audiotape and combined the story with images of the american west which i took with a video camera during a car ride through Arizona.

 

The images, arranged in series, suggest a constant movement without arrival showing the leftovers of the landscape once representative for the dream of the west. Trucks, highways, infrastructure and decay pass by while John tells his tale.