Sarah
Christianson

Homeplace

"The search for homeplace is the mythical search for the axis mundi, for a center, for some place to stand, for something to hang on to." -Lucy Lippard, from The Lure of the Local

Home, for me, will always be a 1200-acre farm in the Red River Valley of eastern North Dakota. Its original 160 acres were homesteaded in 1884 by my great-great grandfather, a Norwegian immigrant. My parents are now the fourth, and last, consecutive generation to work our land, as my siblings and I (like so many other young people) have all moved away to pursue other careers. These circumstances provided me with the impetus to document our farm and its origins in Norway at this critical juncture. I combine my images with materials from my family's archive, such as documents and snapshots, to create a rich multi-layered narrative. Just as different layers of texts intermingle on reused ancient manuscript pages, the history of our farm is marked again and again on the land as a palimpsest. As world populations shift from agrarian to urban lifestyles, our small family farm is only one amongst many that are approaching a crossroads. What will happen to them? Who will maintain these traditions and what does this tradition mean?