ODDYSSEY - The Billiad - Trade Edition
There are nearly one hundred towns in Ohio which bear the names of foreign places. Most of these communities were settled in the early 1800’s when it was fashionable to label a frontier town with an exotic foreign name. I was born and raised in Cincinnati and moved to New York City in 1985 after living in Colorado for ten years. My sense of place was disrupted and I had just started a job which required extensive worldwide travel. In May 1985 between assignments I visited 69 towns over two weeks to photograph glimpses of everyday life in Ohio. I discovered that each of these archetypally American towns really was a foreign place with its own unique character. When possible I photographed myself with a sign showing the town’s name in a spot which captured some character of the place. I used a Nikon L35AF point and shoot camera with color negative film. The camera was on a tripod and the self timer allowed me to run into position. In 1985 I hand made one copy of this book with Cibachrome prints. In 2006 I scanned the original negatives and captions and assembled this book using a print-on-demand service. This edition is limited to 100 signed books plus one artist’s proof.
The names of these towns reflect the dreams and aspirations of the founders of those small communities in an unfamiliar environment that they were making their home. These names reflect the ambitions of people who were dissatisfied enough with their past to change it, yet optimistic and hopeful enough to make plans for their future. Still, each town's resemblance to its namesake may be difficult to discern because today's reality does not conform to yesterday's dreams and expectations.
When the Ohio country was settled at the end of the Revolutionary War, the immigrants and the frontiersmen who colonized the wilderness were people with grand ideas and aspirations, an indomitable spirit and a desire to make a better future and a willingness to overcome challenging, awesome odds. These adventurous spirits were dreaming of better lives possible now that the Union was free.
Today these towns with foreign names form a microcosm of modern life in America and the world: a portrait of human ambitions and aspirations tempered by the realities of today's world. These are people living in a middle ground between where they find themselves and those dwellings of dreams. Each of these places in Ohio and the world has something significant to commend it: some meaningful phenomenon which makes it important. That event, that person or place may at first seem to be only a minor footnote to a trivial event in the grand scale of the world. But in reality it looms large in the lives of the vital people of the world in Ohio and symbolically in the world beyond.
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