Driver’s Dog, 36×54 cm, 2015, photo series
Material/Technique: Tracing Paper, sun, photography, giclée print Epson enhanced photo paper matte; printed with Epson ultra chrome K3 pigment ink on an Epson pro large 11880/9800
Traveling through the US, PolakVanBekkum stopped at desolate locations to depict the landscape at low sun. Although not behind the wheel (still no license) Esther, aka Driver’s Dog, held a strong opinion about when to stop.
“A road movie in atmospheric stills”, according to Jan Pieter Ekker in his review of the exhibition Drivers Dog in Het Parool, december 2015.
Artistic motivation
Driver’s Dog, a road trip becoming road art
In this photo series, the morning sun is our projector, tracing paper the screen. Reality is visible in hand and sheet. What is illuminated is hidden from view, a projection. Whether it is nature or traces of human presence. We look at the world through a screen.
An inevitable coveted drive on endless asphalt roads through the heart of America, accros the Rocky Mountains. Making it our landscape. And capturing it. Road trip. Road art.
Inspiration
We carry with us Walker Evans as a chronicler of the flatlands. His portraits are an inspiration. Not to make portraits ourselves, but to create images that touch us just as hard, that glow in our chests.
With her unusual media choices, her (self)reflection, and use of reflection and shadow, Vivian Maier travels with us, as does Graciella Iturbide with her hard graphic black and white images of the landscape. And with ‘the silence of light and beauty, the silence that holds a promise’, as photographer of the serene mid-west Robert Adams wrote, we captured a 21st-century landscape in Driver’s Dog.
The road trip is a specific way to experience the landscape – you drive or are a passenger, and you look, smell, feel, and listen. The road movie as cinematic screen projection is equally iconic. To redo that would create an inescapable layer between ourselves and the landscape. In Driver’s Dog, we have given that screen its rightful place: between us and the route experience.