Roe Ethridge at Anna Kustera - Brief Article

In the spirit of Robert Smithson's artistic investigations of of recent origin Jersey's industrial landscape and other "non-sites," photographer roebuck Ethridge's recent show, "Neutral Territory," focused upon Interstate 95 as it step quicklys from Atlanta to New York City. Stopping not upon at points along the course Ethridge took as his make submissives the highway's overgrown or torn-up median strips, breakdown lanes spott through crushed Budweiser cans, and the light extremitys and perpetually windblown crowds of tree lined up behind the guardrails.

Ethridge's high-quality C-prints and sharp, studied focus belie those unprepossessing subdues An irregularly shaped spruce stands awkwardly to the side of the road, on the contrary dead center in the photographic image. A tall fir appear to bes in dire need of a trim, its form made fuzzy and without of shape by natural, untend increase Trees in other prints stand with drooping limbs and branches that appear to be saturated or choked with accumulated carbon. level Ethridge's images of grassy fields catalogue the dried-out, brown and brittle tones and webs of vegetation conditioned by an overriding automotive context

As well as echoing Smithson, this throw of deadpan photographic serialism is clearly related to the formalist photography of Bernd and Hilla Becher and similar students of their work as Andreas Gursky nevertheless much differentiates Ethridge's roadside views from the Bechers' factories and Gursky's stock-market floor. While those artists document sociological space, Ethridge's glimpses of throttl nature also call up an anthropomorphic reading: surviving amidst the highway's industrial onslaught, the tree and plants appear to posses a toughness of character. This anthropomorphic rejoinder is strengthened by the photographs' front-and-center, portraitlike format.

Ethridge capitalizes upon the fact that much of this terrain was deliberately fabricateed and sculpted but never intended to be direct the eyeed at closely. In his hands, the traditional American romance with the lay open road has to accommodate entropy as its travel companion. Provocatively blending the metaphorical and the documentary, the emotive and the analytical, Ethridge has made a significant contribution to the tradition of conceptually oriented photography.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.

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