Antone Dolezal and Lara Shipley return to their home region of the Ozarks in the American Midwest, where locals persist in their search for a legendar…
Antone Dolezal and Lara Shipley return to their home region of the Ozarks in the American Midwest, where locals persist in their search for a legendary floating orb of light that can only be seen from the Devil’s Promenade. It’s a lushly wooded road in an area where wanderers flock to seek possible redemption, or just to escape the boredom and darkness of ordinary rural life. Subtle but revealing portraits are mixed with archives and reinterpretations of mythical, folkloric tales. It’s a nuanced, mysterious, and tender representation by photographers returning to the place where they grew up, but also reveals the current, stark realities of a remote place in America.
The Ozark backwoods are a place you feel — dark nooks in the woods and the banks of rivers, the smell of wet life and decay, a steady insect hum, the mysteries of darkness and light
The Ozark backwoods are a place you feel. The dark nooks to hide, made in encroaching woods and the banks of rivers, the smell of wet life and decay, a steady insect hum, all create a backdrop for a people with a particular fascination for the mysteries of darkness and light. Here some of the oldest stories of humanity are told — wanderers’ lost souls and paths taken towards good or evil — but with a local twist in the tale of a strange orb of light.
The Ozark backwoods are a place you feel — dark nooks in the woods and the banks of rivers, the smell of wet life and decay, a steady insect hum, the mysteries of darkness and light
The Ozark backwoods are a place you feel. The dark nooks to hide, made in encroaching woods and the banks of rivers, the smell of wet life and decay, a steady insect hum, all create a backdrop for a people with a particular fascination for the mysteries of darkness and light. Here some of the oldest stories of humanity are told — wanderers’ lost souls and paths taken towards good or evil — but with a local twist in the tale of a strange orb of light.
Antone Dolezal and Lara Shipley have created a collaborative series that is all about exploring myth, story telling, and understanding place. There’s something about the woods at night that makes your hair stand on end (as the Blair Witch Project so wonde
Antone Dolezal and Lara Shipley have created a collaborative series that is all about exploring myth, story telling, and understanding place. There’s something about the woods at night that makes your hair stand on end (as the Blair Witch Project so wonderfully exhibited), add onto the uneasy feelings of darkness in nature with a mythology of Spook Light, and you have a series that sets our imaginations in motion. Antone and Lara are offering a print sale of this project that is available until November 15th. Go here for more info. Monies collected will go towards Devil’s Promenade as a monograph book project.
Hailing from the American Midwest, photographers Lara Shipley and Antone Dolezal dive headlong into the rolling “hills and hollars” of southern Missouri
Drawn to the dense backwoods of the Ozark Hills, two photographers heard tales of a mysterious light that appears on chance nights in a region known as the Devil’s Promenade. Locals call it the Spook Light, and for many this unexplained phenomenon symbolizes a desire for redemption and the fear of slipping into darkness. — Lara Shipley and Antone Dolezal
