JULY 2015 - DECEMBER 2015
Scott Conarroe
Make a Move – Selections from By Rail
Scott Conarroe is a Canadian artist born in Edmonton, who works in large-format landscape photography. Conarroe’s work is formal in its attention to fine detail and sharp clarity, and his subject matter, of rural and urban settings from vast elevated viewpoints, conjures social and cultural reflection.
Conarroe’s By Rail (2008) series, depicts a journey taken on by the artist to document life along railways throughout Canada and the United States. In these selected images we find vistas of both residential and rural environments.
This series documented the vastly under-utilized infrastructure of the railway systems in North America. It raised the question that if other developed nations were embracing the social, economic, and environmental benefits of expanding rail transport, why had the use of existing North American railway systems diminished? Today these images find new footing as our cities make moves to embrace the benefits of this expansion, shifting the transportation of goods and passengers off the roads and onto the tracks.