Mohawk Yard, Glenville, New York 2 - 1991

James Welling made this photograph, ‘Mohawk Yard, Glenville, New York’, with film and a camera. There's something about the way the light is captured, almost flattening the scene, that makes me think about the act of seeing itself. The gray scale is so rich and full, it feels almost like a painting. You can almost feel the stillness of the scene, the quiet hum of the power lines. I am really drawn to the textures, the way the light catches on the rough bark of the trees on the left side, and then the scraggly, brushy undergrowth. There's a real tension between the natural and the industrial, the wild and the tamed. That telephone pole cuts right through the scene, a rigid, man-made form against the softer, organic shapes of the trees. Welling reminds me a little bit of some of the New Topographics photographers, folks like Robert Adams or Lewis Baltz, who were also interested in documenting these kinds of overlooked, in-between spaces. But Welling brings his own sensibility. For me, art's always a conversation, a way of seeing and thinking that keeps evolving.