As American Falls

As American Falls fades from my life, I find myself vainly attempting to lock its memory to a position of tenderness and beauty--backdropped by allergy ridden summers and iced over winters; of cleaning steamy french fry furnaces one hour, and frigid potato freezers the next.

Overlooking southeastern Idaho's Snake River--tamed and fattened by a massive dam, illuminated by brilliant sunsets--American Falls seems to be dying a death that is as slow as it is unspectacular. The local businesses of the past are all but gone, devoured by monsters like Walmart--25 miles from town. Agriculture, the primary source of the town's economy has also felt the corporate bite. Family farms that made Idaho known for their "Famous Potatoes" are disappearing in favor of giant farms controlled by international conglomerates. A future coal gasification plant for fertilizer production is seen by many as the town's best hope.

I moved to Idaho with my family when I was ten. (The joke is) none of my family members who chose to stay in Idaho got out alive. The economy, agricultural pollution, the wind and the cold make this town a place not for the weak or faint hearted. In spite of the challenges that face American Falls, people make lots of babies. They go to churches, go to bars, and many, while still young and independent, just go; as did the town's namesake--destroyed by the very dam that irrigates the crops that feed us.

-Steve Davis, 2010

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The Rainier School

The Rainier School is a state operated institution for the developmentally disabled, not far from Seattle at the base of beautiful Mount Rainier.  The school at the Rainier School disappeared years ago.  There are no young people.  Many of its residents have lived there for their entire lives. They have been betrayed by their minds, and many cases, their bodies. Most of its residents are now elderly, and this extensive campus (complete with pool, bowling alley, restaurant and its own farm) is now home to only about 370 people, about 20% of its peak capacity. 

My objective was to document the final days of a school-turned rest home.  In a sense, it is a carefully monitored prison.  In another, it is a charming country club.  Nowadays, as we avoid the institutionalization of the developmentally disabled, the Rainier School and many similar facilities are the victims of our social progress.  These images represent the end of a major public commitment, and the unique culture it created.  

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Captured Youth

From 1997 to 2005 I photographed incarcerated teens in Washington State. They live in state and county institutions, often referred to as “schools.” In fact, they are jails for juniors--full of secrets and hidden from the public's eye. Inside, everything is bright and fully exposed. Everyone is watched. The residents are here for committing crimes, but bad luck and the accident of birth contribute to the likelihood of imprisonment.

I’ve been continually struck by the simultaneous vacuity of these institutions and the intensity and passion found in the faces of its young residents. It is these faces that I asked to do the talking. There is more to learn from the eyes than from the architecture. There are exceptions. The Green Hill School’s Intensive Management Unit, for example, demanded my attention as the most inhumane living environment I ever witnessed.

It is my hope that as viewers look at these images, they consider some of the messy and complicated issues surrounding such a great number of young people who live, laugh, and suffer in exile.

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The Western Lands

Beauty can lurk in strange places, and I find myself drawn to landscapes which suggest ambiguity, emptiness, and the spiritually untidy.   To me, they resonate as backdrops to stories and dreams—vague suggestions of the earth as a temporary gesture.  They are as close to nowhere as I can get. 

-Steve Davis 2009

For the past 10 years, Davis’ work has investigated and often times critiqued the way contemporary culture deals with people who reside at the margins, the so-called underbelly of our social classes.  The photographs in the series The Western Lands marks the artist’s shift away from portraiture to landscape, new territory for the artist. 

Davis’ work is very much rooted in the tradition of landscape photography.  It is through the artist’s framing mechanism that his images demonstrate the visual capacity of place.  The artist is exploring the history of the landscape and our relationship to it physically, socially and culturally.  For Davis, the photographs, lacking textual signs become signifiers for the non-specificity of place; how images can act as a trigger of distant memories or dreams.  Each image is imbued with a sense a familiarity, a recognizable feeling, yet conveying an ambiguity of being close to nowhere.  Often there are traces of human activity which add a human gesture to a landscape devoid of people.     The images from  The Western Lands are an exploration of the harshness of nature, man’s imprint on it and its beauty. It encompasses the emptiness of the high desert, the richness of the verdant temperate Northwest, and the arid valleys of southern California.

-James Harris 2009

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steve davis

 

photography projects

 

 

The Rainier School

The Rainier School is a state operated institution for the developmentally disabled, not far from Seattle at the base of beautiful Mount Rainier.  The school at the Rainier School disappeared years ago.  There are no young people.  Many of its residents have lived there for their entire lives. They have been betrayed by their minds, and many cases, their bodies. Most of its residents are now elderly, and this extensive campus (complete with pool, bowling alley, restaurant and its own farm) is now home to only about 370 people, about 20% of its peak capacity. 

My objective was to document the final days of a school-turned rest home.  In a sense, it is a carefully monitored prison.  In another, it is a charming country club.  Nowadays, as we avoid the institutionalization of the developmentally disabled, the Rainier School and many similar facilities are the victims of our social progress.  These images represent the end of a major public commitment, and the unique culture it created.  

CLOSE