Pearl Road by Colton Rothwell

Issue 179

In this series, titled Pearl Road, I draw upon memories to examine my relationship with the cultural and physical landscape of my youth. I was raised for the most part in a town of 700 people in rural Idaho and felt like an outsider after discovering I was gay in my early adolescence.

During my formative teenage years, I was faced with a choice, to conform to the traditional (colonial) masculine culture of the Western United States – one defined by violence and destruction – or to run away and create my own sense of belonging. It is through this struggle that my relationship with the idea of place emerges, and I question the persistence of the mythology of the West. The landscape provided both solitude and escape when I was with lovers, but also made us extremely noticeable. It is this tension between ecstasy and fear that I hope to convey in my image-making.

Inspired by the structure of post-documentary approaches by photographers in the 2000s and the aesthetics of the New Topographics exhibition in 1976, the work is intended to meander alongside the vast, altered landscape.

When this project first started, I was attempting to recreate a distinct personal narrative from my experiences in the landscape. However, as time has progressed and my archive has grown, I am beginning to interpret the work as a larger psychological exploration using bodies and the land as metaphors to understand a complicated (personal) tension between fear and desire.

Colton Rothwell (he/him) lives and works in Eugene, Oregon and Missoula, Montana, United States.
www.coltonrothwell.com | @coltonrothwell