Transplanted
I use photography for its ability to frame subjects of everyday life and disconnect them from both time and place. I am interested in the conversation within and between images, the pattern language that emerges and the imagined conclusions that follow. My goal is to call out the unnoticed details of ordinary places and, in so doing, enrich the act of looking.
Transplanted is an exploration of trees which have been placed in suburban environments. These trees decorate our commercial developments with repetitive design combinations, becoming commonplace to the point of being overlooked. The goal of these images is to allow for a slower, more sustained study of these artificial combinations of young trees, encircled by concrete, asphalt, mulch, gravel and rocks.
Printed on a large scale to support an immersive experience, each image in the series is assembled from portions of 25-50 photographs captured over several minutes to reflect a longer look and encourage a more concentrated viewing experience.
- Chris Rayburn, 2018
Corners
There is a quiet meditative quality in our bedrooms, our innermost private living spaces. Corners is an ongoing series that utilizes the frame and a square format to present multiple viewpoints over many years of the corners of the bedrooms of my home.
This series focuses on a small portion of our daily surroundings and the ability to open a visual discussion between the infinite combinations of walls, ceilings, light and geometric forms. This dialog and the chance to look harder at these spaces slows my mind and opens my awareness of not only my surroundings but my place.
- Chris Rayburn, 2017
Neighbors
Neighbors, isolates a cross-section of the city of Bettendorf, Iowa and couples nearby homes from similar eras of construction. The city’s rapid growth, combined with post World War II building processes, produced a community of neighborhoods where homes were built as replicas or mirrored duplicates of each other. As these homes have aged, they have evolved to represent their past and current owners while retaining the skeletons of their initial production.
These paired images can serve as historical documents of where and how we live. More importantly, they embody a simplified collection of formal shapes and elements of each home front. I like how these things talk to each other.
- Chris Rayburn, 2016