California, Freedom or The Road To Nowhere?

German photographer Sarah-Johanna Eick used her camera to immortalise parts of the United States that populate the collective imagination – cafes, old trading posts and the colours of the desert.
 


Sarah-Johanna Eick often travels to the United States, and one of her favourite places there is California, with its huge expanses of landscape that also give free rein to freedom of thought.
 




The German photographer brings together the theme of spatial and mental freedom with her exploration of many of those clichés that flood our collective imagination when we think of the American West Coast, things like the gold rush, John Steinbeck books, Hollywood movies and music videos. 





Sarah-Johanna Eick takes photos of the present reality, then carefully puts together her images and uses colour to take you back to the past, making them look almost like movie sets. Sarah-Johanna Eick knows this area inside out, and she believes that this present reality is about to disappear, so she decided to use her camera to keep a record of it, knowing full well that “all images interpret rather than laying automatic claims to the truth”, as Fred Ritchin writes in “Bending the Frame”.





By sharing her photos with us, she is also sharing her love for these boundless spaces, where the presence of humans is manifested in ordinary architecture, in simple materials, in a few signs: the backdrop for our imaginary films.

(Christiane Bürklein)

Project Freedom
by Sarah-Johanna Eick, http://saraheick.tumblr.com/
Year: 2012-2014
Photography © Sarah-Johanna Eick
Gallery LUMAS