Country Living Photo Essay Part 2
by Sean Gilchrist ’17, joint Samek/Place Studies Fellow
Part art project, part photo ethnography, Sean will be responding to themes present in Country Living by documenting images of rural life in Lewisburg and the surrounding region. See how this project grows during the course of the exhibition.
“This photo essay explores spatial relationships between environments and the people who reside in them. By occupying a space, one is transposed into a mutual give and take relationship with the space. Both human and naturalistic features change spaces to give identifying characteristics that become a part of the landscape itself.
In rural Pennsylvania, the modification of the natural environment by its inhabitants brings about a unique spatial dichotomy between a subject and its surroundings. Actions as varied as farming, housework, and skateboarding all serve to create a redefined sense of what one considers the country. One becomes a part of one’s surroundings and vice vera; Country Living in this sense is the appropriation of ones own individualized ideas and perceptions over an oft-perceived spiritual identity of a landscape.”
