PROJECT

Dallas Renaissance, 2nd Edition

A study of the public spaces and architecture of Dallas, Texas.

This collection is a follow-up to a portfolio of street photography commissioned by The Joule, a boutique hotel in downtown Dallas, Texas. Forerunner in a wave of redevelopment projects aimed at commercially reviving the city’s center — an area succumbed to near abandonment since the 1980’s — the hotel is, in part, notorious for its contemporary art collection, which refers thematically to the local climate of transition and its attendant frictions.

To those issues, the first portfolio (photographed in 2008) examined the tension between power and uncertainty evoked in the austere ambiance of Dallas’s architecture and public spaces — then just on the verge of their “urban renaissance.” Five years later, those dynamics were revisited in the second portfolio, with emphasis shifting to the ubiquitous symbols of yearning and stature throughout the city. 

Owing to its evolution as a transportation hub and inland port, the psyche and physical demeanor of Dallas emerged against the backdrop of the western prairie’s expanse and a continuous experience of transience. The local affinity for monumental form, particularly in art and architecture, strongly suggests these influences and speaks to a deep spatially-based instinct for identity signaling and longing for permanence. Regardless of how the latest reconfiguration of the city unfolds, Dallas remains seemingly steadfast at heart, and in effort, to articulate an urbanized iconography for the mythic promises of the American Frontier.

The collection includes 48 photographs.

MEDIUM

35mm, Pigment Photographic Prints

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