Joplin, MO

A huge Tornado passed close to Overland Park on Sunday night, shaking our home as the sirens sounded. I heard this morning that this Tornado hit hard the southern Missouri city of Joplin, causing massive devastation. I know Joplin, having passed through it on one of my route 66 trips made a few years ago. I have considered driving down there today, but it is not possible because I need to prepare for my trip to NYC early tomorrow morning. Here are a few of the images I made in and around Joplin on that trip. My thoughts go out to the people of Joplin in this desperate time.

"A massive tornado that tore through the southwest Missouri city of Joplin killed at least 89 people, but authorities warned that the death toll could climb Monday as search and rescuers continued their work at sunrise.

City manager Mark Rohr announced the number of known dead at a pre-dawn news conference outside the wreckage of a hospital that took a direct hit from Sunday's storm. Rohr said the twister cut a path nearly six miles long and more than a half-mile wide through the center of town, adding that tornado sirens gave residents about a 20-minute warning before the tornado touched down on the city's west side.

Much of the city's south side was leveled, with churches, schools, businesses and homes reduced to ruins.

Fire chief Mitch Randles estimated that 25 to 30 percent of the city was damaged, and said his own home was among the buildings destroyed as the twister swept through this city of about 50,000 people some 160 miles south of Kansas City."

Report from KCTV5's news website:

http://www.kctv5.com/news/27984786/detail.html

Video of the storm can be viewed here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13501695

Road Trip: NYC-Niagara Falls-West Virginia-Nashville-Kansas.

Along I-70 East (Truck Stop)

Groom, TX

Ottawa, KS

I-35 East

Road to Rolla, MO

Next week I will be meeting my Mother and Brother in New York City. I haven't seen my family for over three years and I am looking forward to it very much. After flying to NYC we will spend some time exploring the city and then rent a car in Manhattan (booked here) and drive it back to Kansas after first taking a northern detour to visit Niagara Falls, a place I have always wanted to see, but until now, not had the chance. My Mother has never before visited the U.S. and I can think of no better way of giving her a flavor of it's massive scale and geographic diversity than taking a road trip by car.

From Niagara we intend to head directly south through Pennsylvania, making various stops along the way and then traveling the length of West Virginia (weaving the 'Red Roads' which will be the title of a future photo series). West Virginia is one of the poorest and most beautiful States in the union, I hear, and I have longed to see and explore it. We will then begin heading west into Kentucky to the small town of Middlesbrough, a destination chosen by my mother because it shares the name of the northern England City she was born and raised in. From there we will travel south to Nashville before making the last leg of our journey back home to Kansas City. There will, I'm sure be a lot of meandering along the way too and a lot of photography stops, which will I'm positive will be a powerful test of my wife Jenny and my family's patience. It will be a journey of approximately 2400 miles, a distance which anyone from England will find incomprehensibly huge.

The preparations and time leading up to a road trip, for me, is one which is always filled with both apprehension and excitement. It is a time when my confidence photographically is at it's most vulnerable and it forces me to put every previous image I've made under great scrutiny making me ask, what is it that I am ultimately doing here? I try to pre-visualize the trip and plan the work I will make and the things I will see. Experience though, has told me, again and again, this is an impossible thing to do and I know that any road trip should be embarked upon without expectation of any kind, with the exception of faith and trust. I am acutely aware that I am about to enter the unknown where reality will present itself along with all it's myth and legend, in ways I cannot yet imagine, with whatever photographic projects and ideas I have in mind. It's a beautiful, exciting and pure experience, close to that of a meditation where the present will be continuously unwrapped from moment to moment. America by car with little more than my companions, a map, camera, note book and those dreams.

Gas Station, MO (I-70)

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