Simon Kossoff

On the Ground

Simon Kossoff

From Brighton, England now ​living in Kansas City.

I arrived in America when the ​recession was beginning to ​bite. It was an election year ​and both discontent and a ​need for change was in the air. ​Gas prices were rising steeply, ​the housing market was in ​crisis, business’s were on the ​brink of closing and the future ​for many people was looking ​uncertain.

These images were made ​on several road trips I ​made during this time (and ​still making) and could be ​described as a collection of ​psychic co-ordinate points ​that I have plotted between ​the imagined America that I ​brought with me from England ​and the real America which I ​found on my arrival in 08.

They are the search for a ​kind of personal orientation ​between the dream or idea ​of a place and my actual ​experience of it in reality. Half ​truth and half fiction, these ​photographs are a ‘mental ​geography’ filled with personal ​symbolism and tangled with ​influences I often did not ​know were there until I started ​photographing them.

It is a journey which explores ​the destination.

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