11.28.07

Kamping Kabins
by Ian Baguskas

This photograph is of a group of rental cabins at a KOA campsite called Kamping Kabins. I photographed them from the edge of a large interstate during a snowstorm. The fact that these cabins are so close to a busy road makes them not as quaint as they seem in the picture. The desire to stay in rustic "Old West" style lodging fascinates me as does the compromise made by staying in ones right next to a road full of cars and trucks speeding by.

Kamping Kabins is from my project, Search For The American Landscape, which looks at the relationship humans have with nature; specifically, the conflict between our inherent love of nature and our desire to alter it and need to take from it.

These images were inspired by photographic surveyors such as Timothy O'Sullivan and Carlton Watkins who explored and documented the land and settlements in the old West by photographing landscapes not only for their beauty but also as a record of places that few people had seen before. My photographs, however, are of landscapes that have experienced human exploration and the subsequent impact from the growing demand for convenience and natural resources.

The contrast between the original landscape and what has been added, displaced, or taken away is both interesting and disturbing. Such changes not only alter our experience in these places, but have also transformed the landscape itself.