"In the 1940s, a wetland was filled and leveled to create an airstrip. An artificial grassland was born. Over time the original trees and plants of the wetland returned only to be cut back by mowers and grazing animals. In the 1990s, the abandoned airstrip became the Shawangunk Grasslands National Wildlife Refuge. Now the runways crumble as plants sprout through cracks in the tarmac, and the sun, rain, and snow take their toll. Mowers still cut the grass to hold back the succession to forestland. From the outside world, development, changing agricultural practices, and habitat loss slowly press on its borders. [...]
After four years of photographing in its 500 acre expanse, I am beginning to bring Grassland into focus. These images are a type of fiction; a story of a place told through the traces of its inhabitants—a tire mark here, a bird house or a puddle of broken glass there. Signs of its past, present, and future mark its rationalized topography like small-scale reenactments of the dramas playing out in the world around it. An archeology of the present, the images depict the landscape of this time--managed but wild, planned yet unpredictable, expressed not through traces that have left their mark for centuries or millenium, but through phenomena that are more fleeting and ephemeral, some playing out over a season or years, others lasting a mere afternoon."

Phil Underdown

Authors: Phil Underdown
Artists: Phil Underdown

Hardcover
10,5 x 15 cm
23 color ill.
Edition of 50
out of print
ISBN keine /without
47 Euro
2010