Rob Hann « Muybridge's Horse

Rob Hann

Some of the first photography I fell in love with was David Graham’s American Beauty, which one of my professors showed me in the form of a book early in my time at MICA. Focusing more on places than on people and using bright outdoor light and lots of color, Graham captured the bizarre, funny scenes that can be found all over small-town America if you’re looking for them. I think it was these same qualities in Robb Hann’s photographs that first drew me to his work, which he envisions as a book provisionally titled I Dream a Highway.

Hann drives all over the country, noticing odd scenes and signs and making eerie, deadpan photographs of them. The images often feature a lighting scenario that feels otherworldly, or like a film set. Having grown up in the west and spent most of my life there, I feel a personal connection to the subjects in Hann’s pictures, those weird, wonderful places that feel untouched by the hustle and modernity of cities that at today’s rate of sprawl can’t be too far away.

From the artist’s statement: At the age of three I climbed through a hole in the garden fence and headed off on my tricycle to visit my grandmother’s house a few miles away. It was my first road trip. Later in life I became a photographer and, in 2001, took my first solo road trip with my camera in the American West. I knew I’d found my subject. Since then I’ve moved to New York City and take to the American road whenever I get the chance. I am not documenting the brutal, creeping sprawl of corporate America; I am seeking the magic that still exists in the spaces in between.