Requiem
I grew up in the town of Colonie near Albany, New York. What today is suburbia was then farm fields and apple orchards. The family’s 10 acres were farmed by my Uncle and the vegetables raised were sold at his farm stand or brought to market. I was certainly not a farmer but I grew up with a sense of the land that stays with me to this day. When I was young the capital region’s version of Levittown replaced the apple orchards. Hundreds of modest capes sprung up and a piece of the country was gone. Years later I again live in the country, in southern Rensselaer County in an area that is undergoing the same transformation Colonie went through in the fifties and sixties. I suppose the land here reminds me of my youth. The farms, fields and woods stir that sense of the land within me. The land that is slowly, inevitably dwindling away. There is no stopping this transition. The farm fields will be gone and homes will cover the hillsides. There is nothing unique about this but I feel a need to document this transition, to make images that will become, in a sense, a visual requiem for the land.
