Between Destinations
BETWEEN DESTINATIONS, a photography book published in May 2012, features the photography of Candace Gaudiani. Her images lyrically transform the vistas of train travel into personal artistic statements reflecting the photographer’s haunting memories of an earlier time.
The photographs featured in Between Destinations evoke a dreamy, romantic vision of the landscape we see when traveling. The ethereal images explore what it means to be part of and sometimes estranged from the places we hold in our memories. That very ambiguity of belonging, longing, and estrangement led to Gaudiani’s choice of framing each image through a train window. We are with her on the inside looking out while passing by, reaffirming that we are always between destinations, from birth to the end.
Jane Reed states, “If you look at Robert Frank’s images, he rode through America and he was relating to the people. He was photographing people and small towns and there was a much more social engagement. This is, I think, a lonelier journey.”
For her photography for Between Destinations, Gaudiani avoids images of people in the photographs on the train. “I want the viewer to be all alone experiencing this journey. I like to think of it as a metaphor for the kind of psychological odysseys we undertake.” These images are presented larger than life when exhibited, enveloping the viewer in a mesmerizing story.
“I have always been interested in photography and the art of story-telling,” says Gaudiani, “using photography to explore issues of impermanence.” Her previous photographic work has included: “Do I Measure Up?..” a series devoted to the behind the scenes world of body builders and their judgmental self-criticism – what they choose to reveal publicly and what they keep privately; and “Conversations” a series that features portraits of people in intimate conversations. Each series is very different in subject matter, but there is always the story of a sense of time passing and of life’s changeability and impermanence.