2008 Portfolio Prize Runner Up: Colin Blakely
Recollection of the Battles Fought Maintaining the Home Front, 2006, from the series Somewhere in Middle America
Photographing Keech Avenue, his Ann Arbor neighborhood, Colin Blakely explores the fading rituals of small-town Midwestern life. In his series Somewhere in Middle America, Blakely tells the story of a subtly changing environment through gracefully composed, de-saturated images of lonely spaces—a birthday party without guests, an empty baseball field, a lone firecracker. His evocative titles—Effigy of the Unmarked but Persistent Passing of Time—, for example—emphasize that the recently decorated picnic table or abandoned soccer ball in the snow are more than forlorn objects of celebration; they are symbols, if not evidence, of shifts in community, values, and place. Without inscribing nostalgia or fatalism into his tableaux, Blakely acts as a quiet observer, walking amid ghostly whispers. As he explains, “this work is a celebration of—and possibly a eulogy to—this way of life.”
All photographs from the series Somewhere in Middle America. Courtesy the artist.
Colin Blakely received a BA from Williams College in 1995 and an MFA in photography from the University of New Mexico in 2001. His work has appeared in both solo and group exhibition across the U.S. Blakely lives in Ann Arbor Michigan and more of his work can be found on his website.
