August 28, 2009

Allie Mount

alliemount2.jpg
I have a weakness for western landscapes perhaps born of childhood of 16 hour drives between Texas and Mexico. This was the era before parents used car seats or seat belts and we would turn the back of the station wagon into private forts padded with sleeping bags and stocked with binoculars, Hardy Boys, and flashlights (the flashlights were for shining out the window at night). In my memory of those journeys, after the initial excitement of the trip had worn off, and after we had counted our 100th Volkswagen Beetle and spied everything we were going to spy with our purple eyes, my brothers would always lie down staring out the back window engrossed in endless debate about the nature of things whereas I would gravitate to the window obsessing over flashes of light, large marooned rocks, strange trees, and lone figures out in the distance. I don't remember ever getting tired of that rolling view and even today a long western drive nowhere is one my my favorite things in the world.

Many of Allie Mount's polaroid projects work for me as visual mnemonics allowing me to trace backwards in time to that view from the station wagon window and for this I am grateful.

posted at 07:46 AM by raul

Filed under: photography

TAGS: deserts (1) drives (1) polaroids (2) the west (2)

Comments:

09/02/09 08:26 PM

Seat belts have definitely ruined road trips. Your description of a childhood spent driving through vast landscapes reminds me vividly of my own spent much of the same.
For these trips my dad built us a bench on fold-up legs. It fit in the space where one's legs normally go when seated so that when nighttime approached we would pull it up level with the seat, spread out our blankets across the back of our volkswagon rabbit and fall asleep star gazing out the back of the moving car.

09/02/09 10:20 PM

Love Allie's pictures. She has some nice oceanscapes for your Kennedy post.

Ahh roadtrips.... I'm a child of the 70's and 70's roadtrips were so different than the ones today with childseats and sippycups. We had a pickup truck and my great joy was sleeping in the front seat, or-even better- lying down in the truck bed.... On long summer night trips we would lay out blankets and sleeping bags and pillows... I always wanted to stargaze, but it was so damned comfortable i'd often be asleep in minutes. My dad would tie a rope to each of our belt loops just in case we hit a big bump. Would I do this with my kids? Never! but I do feel my kids are missing out on one of life's great pleasures.

09/03/09 01:08 AM

This story takes me back to my childhood too. Great photo with some interesting tones!

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