human remains

Since I moved to Seattle in late 2024, I’ve been making images of barbed wire topped fences, freeway overpasses, polluted rivers, animal carcasses, and the occasional human being who passes in front of my lens. I enjoy making images of these subjects because I see myself in them. Not as a matter of projection, or some darkness within myself that I see reflected back at me, but because I believe that our constructed environment is an essential cornerstone of the collective psyche. The urban landscape makes visible implicit social rules which set the boundaries of how we move our bodies, as well as our minds. Where can you walk, sit, sleep, play, eat? What is public; what is private? What space is intended for the human body; what space is only for machinery and waste? Every surface has a form and function, and every surface is owned. When I move my body through the spaces I photograph, I feel the pressure exerted upon it by concrete, by heat reflected off asphalt and glass. I feel my mind being molded by signs reading ‘No Trespassing!’, by the walk signal which tells me when it’s safe to cross six lanes of traffic. Human Remains is a construction made from the places I’ve been pulled towards, and been formed by. Construct for construct, image for image.

— Reuben VanHoeve