Overland Park / Over-Land Park. Some Thoughts.

My on-going project about Overland Park, KS has been my photographic playground since I moved here a few years ago and it has been the source of great inspiration and also personal insight. Many of the photographs I have made here have found their way into several sub-projects and it was also the catalysis for my recently completed Remains to be Seen series. The "Over-Land Park" has become, for me, both a window and a mirror, where I have discovered as much about America as I have about myself and my photographic vision. It is where both place and self are slowly becoming one. The objective gravity of my original and sober statement about this city is dissolving. This is something which leaves me enlightened and confused equally, every time I leave my home (or not) to photograph it.

Original Artists Statement:

Overland Park has been consistently ranked in the top 10 best cities to live in the United States, by CNN/Money magazine. Additionally, the city was ranked one of the ‘best places to raise your kids’ and also ranked 3rd for ‘America’s 10 best places to grow up’. As a photographer this news comes as an inspiration and something of a shock to me and I have decided to explore what it is that gives Overland Park this status.

Here's a link to the recent feature Urbanautica published about this series:

http://www.urbanautica.com/post/1312841707/kossoff-overlandkansas

Cage series

Here are some new images from my on-going series 'Cage'. This long term project first began approximately two years ago and I have only added images occasionally, when the opportunity has arisen. Including these new photographs the edit presently stands at 25 and it is still very much a work in progress.

Below is a quote from a previous post about the exploration of these cages and other 'internal landscapes':

"For a while now I have had a fascination with internal and artificial landscapes. It is a theme which has threaded it's way through much of the work I have made so far in the USA and whenever I am lucky enough to see and be in one, I always feel strongly compelled to photograph them.

I am interested in the illusion and the fantasy these places attempt to create and sometimes (in terms of my Cage series) their grim reality too. I love the theatre and suspension of disbelief which goes with standing in a themed museum for example. I always find that these artificial landscapes jar heavily with my own dreams, ideals and experiences and they are always, ultimately, strange, floored and sadly human.

These artificial and internal landscapes often force me to consider my own real life experience of landscapes which I have stood or lived in and questions what I have done with them myself, psychically. I think we are all filled with a lifetime - a history of landscapes, which have themselves, in turn, become a part of who we are as individuals. They become part of our own mental geography, full of archetypes, symbols and markers - integrating themselves inside, with special and personal significance. I always find it interesting and amazing, for example, when a landscape I have recently (or not recently) experienced suddenly becomes the location of a dream I have had. Why has this particular landscape or place been chosen to play out the drama of this dreams events at this time? It is something I find endlessly fascinating.."

Postcards from St Louis, MO (Vertical)

AUBADE Magazine Issue 3

The latest issue of AUBADE magazine has now been published and contains another fabulous collection of photographs, artworks and writing from artists across the world. Issue 3 also includes a recent image of my own, made on the road to Dodge City earlier this month. Many thanks to Christopher Turner for his passion, vision and hard work on what looks to be another great journal.

AUBADE Issue 3 can be previewed and purchased from Magcloud here:

http://www.magcloud.com/browse/Issue/187338

"Aubade Magazine Issue 3 is a kalaidoscope of work-a-day artistic topography - writing by cult US writer James Brown, photography by David Solomons, Dave Mason, Andy Brown and Simon Kossoff, Robert Saucier amongst luminous others, art by Mayako Nakamura, poetry by Didi S Gilson...Oh, and some unidentified objects sketched by a fearful public and sent to the ministry of defense."