Chimney Houses, Halifax NS, 2005
Suburb, London ON, 2006
Loop Canyon, Chicago IL, 2007
Monorail Station, Miami FL, 2008
Canal, Cleveland OH, 2008
House With Pool, Shrewsbury WV, 2008
Ball Diamond Parking Lot, Winnipeg MB, 2008
Cul De Sac, Hawthorne CA, 2008
Forest Fire Plume, Golden BC, 2008
Wyoming, 2008
Hobo Camp, Reno NV, 2008
Mississippi River, Baton Rouge LA, 2008
Patio Set, Thomasville GA, 2008
Rail Yard, St Louis MO, 2008
Storage Lot, Cochrane AB, 2008
Streetcar Stop, New Orleans LA, 2008
Streetcar Stop, San Francisco CA, 2008
Trailer Park, Wendover UT, 2008
The Coaster, Del Mar CA, 2008
Prairie Tracks, Saskatchewan, 2008
By Rail
Stretching from polar to sub-tropical latitudes and straddling the world's longest non-militarized border, Anglo-America is a vast geo-cultural bloc of the remaining Cold War superpower and a bastion of the British Empire. By Rail looks at the
landscape and built environment along the railways of Canada and the United States. It evokes the contradictory narratives
of romantic expansionism and post-colonial, post-industrial malaise. It considers the armature these modern nations were
built upon.
North America is a product of railways. With its independence from England, the United States' colonial economy gave
way to a mercantile society in which national trade was increasingly important. Steam ships and canals facilitated early
transport, but the advent of a functional railroad system gave rise to the bi-coastal nation. Canadian confederation was
contingent upon an east-west rail link that would foil American aspirations above the 49th parallel. Rail drove the most
ambitious chapters of the continental saga. From the Atlantic immigrants and Civil War veterans laid down tracks, and from
the Pacific raw Chinese labour broke through mountains. In Europe railways connect historic centres, but here most inland
cities began as whistle-stops and imported populations displaced natives from the hinterlands. North American society has
been uniquely affected by the ways railroads were built and financed, and by their sweeping command of the landscape. To
this day we maintain a distinct, albeit puzzling, relationship with rail: while every other developed nation is decades into a
renaissance of the technology, we insist Rail Is Untenable. Japan still refines its "Bullet Trains" even though Toyota is now
the world's most successful car company, Deutsche Bahn anticipates record profits for 2012, and China is transforming its
backwaters with a massive rail infrastructure overhaul. In contrast, we nurse a limp auto sector, unfurl more sprawl and pull
up derelict branch lines for scrap metal. Whether or not railways could solve our contemporary woes, the vehemence with
which they're dismissed here betrays a schism. Despite rail's role in this society's golden age, the automobile is the
dominant symbol of frontiersy independence; the notion of riding with others to a common destination smacks of the
bogeyman Socialism. In this culture railways are both a source of welling pride and a vague hysterical threat. It's not
surprising that in this moment of uncertainty, when Western preeminence isn't taken for granted and the environmental costs
of industrialization accrue, we are polarized into camps of Change and Retrogression. It is no coincidence that the change
Americans elected in 2009 was also the first president-elect in half a century to arrive in Washington by rail.
Despite a polemical taint in my rhetoric, the series By Rail functions more as treatise than indictment. It considers the scope of disparate territories pulled together with rail lines. It inventories a geo-cultural feature rendered almost invisible through ubiquity, and it casts a sidelong eye at democracy itself by treating trailer parks and greyfield sites with the same regard as
seaside vanity homes. Each scene is depicted with as much tenderness as frankness; this ambivalence between grand
flattery and pointed critique mirrors the way the civilization rests between its illustrious past and a dawning era.