Edition of 20
Signed & Stamped on verso
John Sanderson Studio
Larger Sizes Available Upon Request

As seen throughout my work, visions of America's built environment range from the industrial and chaotic to others pastoral and balanced. The Two Harbors Lighthouse has guided freighter ships carrying iron ore from Minnesota's Iron Ranges into the harbor for a hundred years. It was during the drive into the night when I began to reflect on the meaning of this image.

While spending entire days in the field, looking for photographs, the waning afternoons often remind me of approaching night. Tension within me builds in response to the urgency to create more photographs and make use of my time far away from home. Will I find something? Each photograph is a step towards the twilight. Being outdoors is an opportunity find meaning in the external world. In my own journey, this is often found in those conclusive moments where the natural order is awakened, space opens up, and places can breath. I don’t often create more than a few pictures per day because the very things I am interested in, and the weather conditions I am after, are naturally more scarce.

The goal is to suspend and expand these moments into the permanence of a photograph.

The crooked path, paved in squares with lines of stubborn grass poking through, is the pivot upon which this picture moves. I smiled upon the feeling of oneness with this metaphor for my own coursing ambitions. Over the previous days I visited the towns of Marquette, Ashland and Duluth. These are places with history steeped in the transportation of iron-ore from the Mesabi Range via freight ships sailing to the steel mills in Gary, Cleveland and Detroit. I took pictures of their monumental ore-docks and Great Lakes Freighter ships. Along the Lakefront of Superior several good pictures came together to relieve my weary eyes and brace my soul.

Such a moment as that occurred when I reached the heights overlooking the Lake here in Two Harbors. The two buildings, framing a view of the horizon, came slowly into composition as I left the town below. The houses on either side directed me into contemplation of the path and its connotations to my own journey. Low clouds blanketing the lake served as omens to future unknowns inherent to my chosen task of photographing the American Realm. My efforts are not always rewarded with a successful picture during the last light of the day, but on that early April evening all the important parts of a photograph came together.