David Ramos

Southern States in the Mirror

I produced upwards of 1000 frames of negatives, about 400 digital images, and a sketchbook full of notes and sketch maps from a summer 2005 trips into the Coastal South. I am in the habit of taking photographs out the windshield of my car, aiming a palm-size digital camera with one hand. Over the years, I have gained some measure of control over the cameras orientation (and retain control over the car, always), but the point of view remains that of a driver, usually at speed. In this project, I isolated a group of digital snapshots, taken out the car window. I took the original images, produced in a this casual, thoroughly modern method, and turned them into multi-color gum bichromate prints, using an old, labor-intensive printing process. I hoped to picture familiar subjects in an unfamiliar way, to suggest that history lies close to the surface, if only one can look deeply.