This was a sheet of mylar covering a window of a restaurant that got a lot of sun. The mylar was reflecting a street construction site with lots of orange cones and netting and vests. I had never seen that kind of distortion before. I went back to this site several times, across Elm from what was and may still be a Dallas Community College. What looks like a stem in the bottom half of the picture is actually an oblong hole in the mylar. The edges of the hole are reflecting two different things. The restaurant had several large windows and each had one of these reflective sheets, which we call mylar.
- Subject Matter: landscape, urban
- Created: July 31, 2009
Other Work From Ross Odom
Pictured here are what I've come to describe as subjective subjects. They are about metaphor, or suggestion, or the mystery in the often mundane material of human existence.
They are simple, straight photographs. I don't look for the best or the brightest or most mysterious light. Because, while I recognize photography's requirement of light, these shots are rarely about light.
There are no messages in my pictures, hidden or otherwise; there are no "statements" or calls to action regarding modern society or its politics, or any existential crisis we may face. Those subjects are not within my expertise nor in my interest photographically. For the most part, objectively, these simply are pictures of the evidence of human construction, sometimes deliberate, often inadvertent, often ignored, but always having a surprising and inarticulate effect on me. The ones of trees and other plants have a similar but different effect when shooting them. I'm not sure what draws me to them other than their beauty.
Most shots were taken in Dallas, Texas, but some are from Fort Worth, Austin, Round Rock, San Antonio, and Caddo Lake, Texas, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.