2026 SPE Annual Conference: Catalyst for Exchange
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print this pageHighway Reconstruction
Steven Benson
Saturday, October 21 - 2:00PM to 3:00PM
Corn Center, Room 150
The altered landscape has always been a persistent element of my photographic practice. Photographing in gravel pits, for example, was like photographing on another planet. The same could be said for my passion to photograph in construction sites.
For the past seven-years I've been creating images that explore the activities and artifacts associated with the process of transforming the landscape by the construction associated with an enormous highway infrastructure project.
My goals are very different from anyone else working on the new I-4 highway running through Central Florida. The engineers and construction workers are focused on weight loads and distribution, gravity, traffic flow and water runoff. I'm exploring the construction process from a perspective of re-interpretation.
The aesthetic strategy I weave into the imagery would normally be associated with the way photographers have approached national parks like Yosemite or Yellowstone. I'm intrigued with the idea of producing images using rebar, concrete and dirt to create beautiful seductive photographs as a way to draw attention to the effects of our interaction with the land. The complexity of the construction process is experienced as a Surreal undertaking and is reflected in the visual language of the photographs.
I'm reminded of Margaret Bourke-White when she said, "…industrial forms were all the more beautiful because they were never designed to be beautiful. Industry…had evolved an unconscious beauty – often a hidden beauty that was waiting to be discovered."
The process of making these photographs functions as a collaborative activity with individuals I only know through the evidence of their actions. The actions of others are incorporated into my creative process in an effort to recontextualize the meaning of the construction process and its effect on the landscape.
speaker
Steven Benson
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