Hartwell and Ferehawk explore America’s expansion westward, American exceptionalism, and the concept of Manifest Destiny.
“Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country.”
— Horace Greeley.
July 13, 1865. New York Tribune.
Although the quote's attribution is still debated its intent isn't . It encouraged American Civil War veterans to take advantage of the Homestead Act and colonize the public lands of the American West. The Homestead Act focused primarily on arid land East of the Rockies. The subsequent Desert Land Act furthered the expansion to the Western States by incentivizing people to move West and develop irrigation systems that would transform the land into usable space. The Great Depression followed by the Pacific and Korean Wars brought even more people in search of the American dream to this fragile and often unforgiving landscape. Some never made it to the promised land often getting stuck less than a hundred miles from the most desirable never too hot, never too cold coastal land. Others succeeded only be bounced back for lack of resources or sheer bad luck.
California, and particularly LA, where anyone can reinvent one's self, has always been a victim of its own success. The promise of independence and riches along with a perfect climate and a matching scenery resulting in a never ending cycle of booms and busts. Each boom bringing in starry eyed hopefuls only to deject many to the hinterland when the inevitable bust follows. Those who can go back to where they came from while others retreat to the more affordable, dry, dusty, and hot land at the perimeter, hopeful that should their luck turn they will be afforded another attempt. A waiting list of sorts. The same hopes and forces that brought them here seem to inexorably push them farther and farther away from the place they only got a glimpse of. Comforted to be somewhat closer to Eden than most but always far from close enough.
Hartwell and Ferehawk exploration of the land at the periphery is in its infancy. These first shots were mainly taken around Salton City and Highway 79, an old smuggler's road linking San Diego County to Hemet in Riverside County. They goal is to document the myriad of settlements that never quite qualify as towns but never truly die. A temporary state of Limbo for those believers of God who can not enter Heaven.
Framing their photographs as imaginary postage stamps is an ironic take on the propensity of nation states to extoll the imaginary virtues and myths of the realm rather than reality. A propaganda tool itself in decline, yet whose symbolism persists. Forever?
How many Norsemen regretted believing Erik the Red's tales of Greenland wishing they had never left Iceland in the first place? An island less icy and greener than the one they ultimately settled.
