‘Slipstream’ by Patrick O’Hare

Slipstream is a series of photographs by American photographer Patrick O’Hare. The work explores the American landscape in moments of development and it examines how these environments become ravaged during transitional periods. O’Hare throws a dark eye over these places and aims to capture the absurdities and mysteries of the land.

Yet amid these entropic moments O’Hare also manages to capture a bleak beauty amongst the land. My first impressions of his photographs was one of attraction, especially to the colors that O’Hare finds in these mysterious places. Take a look at the red soil at the development site at Lake Forest, Virginia (above), or look at the rich dark-green grass that runs up to Model Home at Clinton, New Jersey. These are place that really capture my interest, and this is something which is important for O’Hare:

I’m interested in what lies behind these netherworlds when they are stripped down to their essence. I look for the hillside drive through where light and darkness fill a shape, the roof of a Wal-Mart stretched to the horizon, the sweep of roadside embankments, cleared and manicured; all the borders where earth, man, and sky meet and melt into each other.

More work can be seen online here, and Slipstream is currently available as a limited edition book.

Philip