“Can loss have its own geography?”. This is the question that haunts Rebecca Norris Web as she composes My Dakota, a photographic work that originates in a dramatic event, the sudden death of her brother.
The only thing that seems to give her any comfort is to drive around and around the landscapes that accompanied her childhood and take photographs.
A sequence of intimate and poetic images is slowly created, accompanied by a few sentences that guide the viewer to the creation of this landscape of feelings, ‘her Dakota’.
My Dakota is a handwritten poem interwoven with the photographs. It speaks of human impact on planet earth, recording changes in the economy and landscape of this state in the heart of United States. It, too, is a eulogy: for the small family farms that are disappearing and the small towns they used to provide sustenance for.
Again, it’s Norris Webb’s way of dealing with the grief of his brother’s passing, “to absorb it, draw it out, and, finally, let it go.”
Edition of 750 copies
