brian castriota
swift river
chromagenic prints, 20" x 24"
2008
photographing the remnants of four towns in the late swift river valley, abandoned and flooded in the 1930s to build the quabbin reservoir for boston, i document the human experience imbued in the surrounding landscape. having made these images in the hills adjacent to my hometown in western massachusetts, i am examining my own proximity with ruin and the ways in which the landscape reflected aspects of my adolescence. in part, the lingering remnants of these towns serve as testaments to a brutality perpetrated against them. at the same time, these images illustrate the reabsorption of history by the earth itself, in the wake of the manipulations and territorialization made upon it by the hands of men.
