April 8, 2009

Ordinary Beauty

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Bulk Storage In Blue. Cedar Bridge Road, Winterset, Iowa 52073. (Phil Bebbington. 2009.)

Shot in that corner of Iowa known for the (celebrated) (and not unappealing) (covered) bridges of Madison County.

clusterflock friend Phil Bebbington’s current series of images shot in the midwestern United States might correct your vision.

Here’s what I mean.

Today I drove from my home in northwestern Illinois across the Mississippi River and over to Dubuque, Iowa. Not much to see, just silos and water towers and utilitarian structures varied and sundry, one stretch of a mundane regional travelogue sparked by the excitement of an occasional anachronism, a diner, say, or drive-in movie theater. Or, you drive far enough north and west, a heap of old covered bridges. Lovely things.

But today I liked-to give myself whiplash popping my eyes from one side of the road to the other to look at things I literally had not seen in all the four, five years I’ve driven the route, though they’ve been there all the while. It’s those photos of Phil’s that done it, and it ain’t just me. I’m echoing a fair number of the recent comments on Phil’s terrorkitten blog.

Go look. You can pull up photos from Phil’s 2009 US trip here (together with a few others from a 2002 trip to the States), or you can just go straight to what’s current and use the previous button to backspace. Look at the rest of his site if you feel so inclined.

His US photos are on Flickr as well, together with others.

But however you get there, get there. It’s a great road trip.

posted by in adventure, aesthetics, architecture, art, beauty, consciousness, discovered, education, photographs, photography, travel, web sites | * | 4 comments 

comments

  1. Sheila Ryan on April 8th, 2009 at 9:51 pm

    That impenetrably dark shadow aside the shed.

  2. Phil Bebbington on April 9th, 2009 at 2:43 am

    Sheila, thank you. I really am very touched – some would say extremely touched to wander Iowa in winter. It was a place that encouraged me to find the beauty in the ordinary – I guess the kind of stuff that we all pass every day.

    Anyway, thank you for the lovely post and thank you those who popped over and looked.

  3. Cindy Scroggins on April 9th, 2009 at 8:37 am

    Thank you for this, Sheila. And thank you, Phil. I think the people who impress me most in this world are the ones who can see the beauty in the ordinary. It’s a gift.

  4. Amanda Mae Meyncke on April 9th, 2009 at 10:22 am

    Lookit them blues! and that red. Pow, Biff! as Batman might say.

    Nicely done.

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