Somewhere and Nowhere
This project was inspired by Willie Osterman, an instructor at Maine Media Workshops and a master black and white printer. After an intense week in the darkroom in 2003, he pulled out a series of stunning color images of day to day scenes taken with a small point and shoot digital camera. I left for a business trip two days later and bought an Olympus camera that would fit in my purse. That night, back in my hotel room, I read the instruction book and learned that the camera had a setting for shooting a subject through glass. I began experimenting at my hotel room window. To avoid reflections from the room, I had to turn off the lights and place the camera against the window. Dirt or raindrops on the window affect the final photo. The constraint on the project was that the image had to be captured head-on. If the views were better on the right or left, I needed a different hotel room.
I traveled around the US from 2003 to 2012 while working for Thomson Reuters and then the Financial Accounting Standards Board. Business travel is not glamorous, and some hotel rooms are better than others. There is usually no time to take advantage of local attractions. So my “sightseeing” was observing what was outside my window. These photographs were made between 2003 and 2012 and are culled from over 300 images made during these business trips.
