Truth in Common #24
Drives with Mother
Dear Readers Old & New,
There is only one day left to support my Kickstarter and get in on
some great low prices on some of my prints or books! Funding is
“All or Nothing” so please help me reach my goal and keep me “out
there” making photographs as I travel the West Coast of the American Realm this upcoming month.
Entry #24 from The Work
Mother at Iona Island, New York, 1999
Even though I grew up in Midtown Manhattan of New York City, I would often go on car trips with my mother. This was before I was old enough to drive on my own. At first we would go without a camera, but I soon realized the power of having one. It was then I began recording everything that stood out to me. Our first destinations were the museums of aviation scattered throughout the United States. On these visits, I would make pictures on my 35mm film camera of the various airplanes. I was mostly interested in the propeller driven aircraft because they held more of a romantic, scarf-flying-in-the-wind type appeal. I took overall views of their frontal, side, rear aspects. Details also interested me. I wanted to create a connection with these machines that seemed to transcend time and hold within them a hidden, inertia of potential energy. These were war planes.
Years later, we continued taking trips together, but now I had turned course and was considering myself an artist. More interested in photographing the nearby Hudson River, I returned again and again to various locations along the river to make pictures. It was like I was hammering away at these places every time I went out to photograph. I kept bumping up against the suspicion that I wasn't making anything worthwhile.
At this point my interest shifted back to the American railroad, a motif running through several of my projects. It was along the river where I shaped my style of photographing the subject. This became the Railroad Landscapes project, perhaps my most popular series. There's a saying, that it is vain to do with more, what can be done with less. I think that is true to many situations in photography, where you have to narrow down the subject to the essential parts to tell the story.
Looking back now on those drives with my mother, I realized she was allowing me the freedom to find my own way as a young artist. She was excited to see what photos I made after our trips. I learned to be my own worst critic -- that's why I shifted focus from trains to the landscape -- but without mother's support especially at an early age, I don't think I would have had the momentum to keep pushing through those difficult creative times.
Please consider supporting my Kickstarter below.
John Sanderson
”The Work”
4/13/2025
Journal introduction from The Work
The American landscape in my time. Thousands upon thousands of miles traversed in search of pictures.
They become pictures when I see something.
Something which cannot be explained in words, only related to on some level of empathy.
Feeling with the light, subject or an arrangement of the two.
Driving, walking, searching deeper and longer for that which eludes me.
What I search for is unattainable.
But what keeps me coming back is the Quest, for those moments where a picture lines up with my imagination.
It is a complete circle.
"To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield." -Tennyson