Altered States of Agoraphobia: 39th St, Kansas City

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

39th St, Kansas City

Here are a selection of image made on Kansas City's 39th St.

The 39th Street West business district and its surrounding neighborhoods offer some of Kansas City 's richest history. Once a vineyard supporting a winery, 39th Street West rapidly became home to some of Kansas City 's most stately, stone and brick homes, destination restaurants and boutique retail.

One of the earliest suburban neighborhoods to flourish in Kansas City's turn of the century expansion, 39th Street West was served by two light rail lines: a single-track streetcar line running to Rosedale, and the "Strang Line" providing a direct connect to areas further south, like Olathe.

"39th Street is a colorful neighborhood district offering a fun mix of fine dining, casual & ethnic specialties. An eclectic mix of shops, bookstores & coffee houses." ~ AOL Cityguide

1 comment:

Dominic BugattoNovember 16, 2010 at 8:36 AM
Wonderful assortment of pictures.
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Welcome

About the photographs: These images are a search for a personal orientation between the dream or idea of a place and my actual experience of it in reality. They can be described as a collection of psychic coordinate points which I have plotted between the imagined America I brought with me from England and the real America I found on my arrival in 2008. These images are half truth and half fiction. They are a psychogeography, filled with personal symbolism and tangled with influences so old they were already part of me long before this journey ever began.

A note about the title:  The compulsion to travel, to move from one place to another, has been with me my whole life. Whether it be local, national or international, I have always found myself either in motion or, if not, I have been dreaming about it. Paradoxically, it has been in the periods of dreaming that Agoraphobia, (which Google defines as “Extreme or irrational fear of entering open or crowded places, of leaving one's own home, or of being in places from which escape is difficult”) has gripped me and, at times, crippled me. These photographs are my continued (once secret) revolt against it in the United States of America today, despite recent quarantines.