John Sanderson: Carbon County | LENSCRATCH

At first glance John Sanderson’s series of images, entitled Carbon County, has the familiar cadence of American Western documentary photography. Broad sweeping landscapes with horizons that seem worlds away, lonely snaking roads and rugged men on horseback. But very quickly these perceived pillars of American Western identity, the keystones in the story we tell ourselves about Western life, take a different shape. There is a tone of mythology in the gaze Sanderson casts upon his subjects as he attempts to merge the fantastic nature of American Western lore with the reality of the place. So many of his photographs are made through the window or dashboard of a car, a framing which begins to feel like it contains a still from an old Western movie. And isn’t that how we most often experience this landscape? Either in film or traversing the country across wide open highway, snapping photos of some road signs or an old windmill and then carrying on our way? I ask myself these questions and then begin to wonder whether I’m allowing the version of the West that exists in my own mind to be projected onto the imagery. And perhaps this is the point. Sanderson presents us with the truth and the fantasy all at once as he explores the narratives ingrained in us – American Frontierism, Cowboys and Indians, and the promise that as you continue West surely wealth and personal discovery would be bestowed.