Roddy began using the camera on his i-phone to take pictures while working on a photography project in North Dakota. The project started when, many years ago, he picked up two old family albums belonging to a woman named Nina Weiste at an antiques mall in Wheatridge, CO. After years of looking at the places and faces in the old photographs from 1917, Roddy began to feel a connection to what he saw and decided to travel to North Dakota looking for ways to further develop a response project to Nina and her pictures. “Cell Phone Landscapes #s 1, 2 and 3” are what resulted from this pilgrimage. He writes:
“After looking at Nina’s photographs for many years, the people and places became familiar to me. As a result of that, when I first traveled to North Dakota looking for ways to develop a project in response to Nina’s albums, I had an uncanny feeling that I was coming home.”
Through his photography, Roddy explores the construction of identity. Back in 1917, Nina Weiste was among the first generations to document her daily life through photographic records. Now, almost 100 years later, Roddy celebrates the cell phone camera as a fresh lens through which to connect with those long ago people.
Read more about Roddy at www.roddymacinnes.com