C h a d d y        D e a n        S m i t h 

Trans-Pecos Region: my home

 

This project offers an anthropological study of the bleak but aesthetic beauty of everyday scenes along roadways of far West Texas. The images capture the coexistence of natural features with “native,” man-made disturbances. Far West Texas represents a union of rugged landscape and big sky that investigates this visual vernacular as a product of culture and environment blending. I intend to explore, document, and display the Trans-Pecos region by photographing the landscape that continues to shape the people who live there. 
This project is not about taking pretty landscape pictures of typical West Texas icons. Instead, it seeks to highlight two elements of this sparsely populated region—land and culture. The land supports a culture with its resources; in turn, the culture defines itself emotionally and physically within the environment, through the landscape, and among the structures it builds.