On My Way to Work
Every day we spend a considerable amount of time going somewhere: We commute from home to work and back again, we run errands, go shopping and visit friends or family. These trips are parts of our daily routine. Every time we take the same route. Every time we pass the same trees and buildings. Every time we encounter the same street lights, billboards, playgrounds and other artifacts of human civilization. Rarely, however, do we notice any of that. While we move from A to B we are preoccupied with what just happened at A or what we expect will happen at B—what was and what will be. Little do we care about the here and now. Over the last six years I have been taking my camera with me on my commute to the office, challenging myself to pay close attention to the world I pass through on my almost two miles long walk to work. What started as a combination of shooting practice and exercise in seeing has since turned into a deep fascination with the sights of my neighborhood: houses of different colors, shapes and states of repair; the varying ways the owners decorate their properties; the fortuitous still lifes of people-made things in the semi-urban landscape of Seattle’s well-off Queen Anne neighborhood.
