Migration

 

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Since moving to the USA in 2003, my art has been driven by my fascination with the scale, the diversity, and the rawness of the American landscape, and especially the unresolved interface between the man-made and the natural. As I became increasingly aware that my being the newcomer and outsider are central to my viewpoint, I started to explore ideas of migration and immigration further.

Recently, I've been interested that “The Immigration Issue” is such a large political entity whilst people’s individual migration stories are each unique and the sum of many small personal dramas.

This group of pictures result from thinking about migration and immigration, and particularly about the personal journeys that people make. They’re populated by a cast that includes hopeful day-laborers, forgotten coal miners, and elusive coyotes caught in fragmented narratives in fragmented landscapes.
 
The laborers need no explanation. The coal miners are a reference both to the influx of European miners to early California, and to the fact that I grew up in an English mining town at a time when the industry was being closed down.  
 
I ran into several coyotes whilst hiking recently and they always seem to have have a particular but elusive presence that I wanted to include in the pictures. They always seem to know that they own the landscape and that we are just passing through their domain.