Picture Yourself (2003)
postcards distributed in Minnesota State Parks and Minnesota sporting goods superstores; installation with photographs, vinyl wall text, shelves, and postcards

Picture Yourself was a public project with a related gallery installation. The gallery installation consisted of five framed photographs takesn in parks; each was marked with an unrelated but precise location taken from a global positioning system reader. Above the photographs a wall text read: "I hope for another such sight wherever I go: one that will set my hands trembling as I raise my camera." A set of postcards was available for gallery visitors. The same postcards were distributed through the Minnesota State Parks system to Parks visitors through the wardens' offices, as well as to shoppers in sporting goods stores. The postcards showed photographs of the parks with a series of GPS locations from which one could make a "perfect" (in the 18th century American landscape painting sense) photograph if one stood on the spot and faced north. The verso of the postcard read "While the vivid picture cannot often be grabbed on the run it is well worth stalking." I invited viewers to join a community of shared photographic experience. The movements of photographers become a pattern, an agreement; the photographs a language through which one can empathize with strangers.