1921
1921 uses photography to juxtapose the mythic west with the literal direction, west. The project is based on a series of photographs taken by Becker’s grandfather when he drove across the country in a Ford Model T in 1921; these images capture our imagination of the western landscape, aesthetically framing mountains, open spaces, and opportunity. Becker identified and revisited each location, but instead, he rephotographed the site using a compass to point his homemade 8x10 camera due, cardinal west. The resulting images, banal and stained by circular light leaks, explore the role of two machines—the camera and the automobile—in the construction of the American landscape, and challenge our aspirations and beliefs about the idealized west.