Mikael Kennedy - The Odysseus
In 2007 I boarded a plane in New York City heading towards Lama, NM. Landing in Albquerque by way of Houston, I found Jessica’s old gold Volvo sedan in the airport parking lot. I was told the keys would be hidden on the front left tire where she had left it several days before. I found the car and the keys and drove the 3 hours north up into Lama where I spent the next two weeks living in the shrine-like home of 60’s painter Bill Girsh. That was where The Odysseus began.
Up until that point the last 10 years of my travel had been centered around the artists I traveled with, the cities we found ourselves wandering in late at night. After all those years of wandering back and forth across America, I found myself alone up in the high desert; I’ve heard that living up close to the mountains of New Mexico has a humbling affect on the artists, that for years artists have found themselves dwarfed by the peaks and humbled in its shadow.
The Odysseus is a series of American landscapes taken during the years of 2007-2010. I found myself circling cities like satellites; following the roads that lead deeper into the vanishing wilderness. It comes at a time when the wildness of America is shrinking, in every form. I found myself fascinated with the idea that America used to be a wild landscape, completely untamed. I had been off and on the road for 10 years but now I found myself driving different roads, looking for points to stand on over-looking the valleys, from Atlantic to Pacific, looking for points of isolation.
All images © Mikael Kennedy
