Raised in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., scott b. davis first became interested in photography in the early 90s when he was compelled to document the wilderness. Looking for places that led him off of the map and into spaces unexplored, he began to dive deep into history. By the mid-90s, davis was working with 19th-century photographic processes and formulas like platinum and palladium printing with large format cameras. The artist, looking for ways to be more physically involved in photography, decided to pick up this practice in order to fail more and try new things with his practice. This led him to discover ways in which he could render new landscapes.
davis creates a ghost of an impression of a landscape by coating a piece of platinum paper, trimming it, and putting it inside of a film holder of a large format camera. As a result, a negative image is created—a white-on-white landscape. Before switching to this process, davis was making very dark, minimalistic, night-based photographs. In a 2013 interview with Jonathan Blaustein, davis says that he was drawn to the landscapes of the western U.S. but that he’s interested in the unfamiliar. And many landscapes are becoming more and more familiar. The answer? Darkness. “I’m looking at the world and seeing how it’s transformed, the other 50 percent of the time. In the darkness. Once the magic hour happens, most people head off to the bar to knock back a drink. Not me,” he says. Now, like a switch on a wall, davis is exploring lightness.
It’s easy to meditate on these photographs, uniquely displayed on the gallery walls in black and white. davis works with the contrast of the frames to create a lightness and darkness encapsulating each image. For so many of us, doom-scrolling and living in the hustle-bustle of a city, davis’s works slow us down, help us sit in thought, and offer a place of reflection within the brambles, brittlebush, and crevasses of the American west. v
