ADAM C POWERS

Let me explain.

I grew up in Daytona Beach, I lived in Orlando, and I reside in Maine. From “The World’s Most Famous Beach” (their words), to the House of the Mouse (Disney included, its essentially tourist attractions stacked on top of each other into a pure distillation of everything tourism [seriously, the Holy Land Experience is down the street from the Porsche dealership and caddy corner across the highway from the Mall at Millenia]), and eventually landing in Vacationland itself.

Now I’m not here to rag on tourist economies or justify some overt rebellion against them. There’s a disturbing side to everything (if you look hard enough). To break it down to basics, I’ve lived the vast majority of my life in places that dictate and/or exploit centers of attraction and it’s cultivated me to look for beauty in inobvious places. Again, that is a vast oversimplification of why I’m a bad tourist, but my nonsequitur rants dissecting beauty, hating on the word mundane, and what the camera’s abstractions have to do with all of this, start to sound like I love the sound of my own voice. Or the smell of my own…well, you get the point.

I’m a bad tourist because I tend to look away from or around the attractions that call for our attention. The obvious beauty is photographed in such abundance that I feel no need to capture it myself. I also prefer to go out, for the purposes of photography, when the weather is blah (I like it overcast, dreary, and cold). And I’m not trying to capture place as much as I am finding my own compositions by abstracting the adjacent areas of attraction.

Alright, I’ve gone on long enough. Here’s some pictures so you can do your own thinking. If you want to hear more, just reach out. Clearly I like to talk about this.