crafted ku # 3 ~ the grid
Tuesday, May 8, 2007 at 11:05AM 
Everything comes in threes • click to embiggenIn 1785 Thomas Jefferson proposed U.S. Rectangular Land Survey - commonly know as the grid. Anyone who has flown across the U.S. knows exactly what that means. Congress passed the grid system into law and from that point on this checkerboard pattern was etched from Ohio across the western U.S. - what has been called one of the most far-reaching attempts at rationalizing a landscape in world history.
This exercise was another step in the ongoing process of commodifying nature. It was, and still is, all about markets and exchange. Early settlers in America set about commodifying everything - beaver, deer, forests, water and land.
Nature as a commodity. I am not suggesting that the basic notion is wrong but I have absoutely no hesitancy in suggesting that the notion has been horribly perverted.
gravitas et nugalis
Featured Comments: Eric Fredine wrote; "Up here in Western Canada our spaces are big. As I've spent time exploring and photographing these spaces one thing that has come to astonish me is how radically and pervasively we have molded these spaces to human needs. And the grid fascinates me as a tangible manifestation of this. I often think of my Horizons and Roads photographs as being at least partly about the grid and its manifestation on the landscape."
Reader Comments (1)
Up here in Western Canada our spaces are big. As I've spent time exploring and photographing these spaces one thing that has come to astonish me is how radically and pervasively we have molded these spaces to human needs. And the grid fascinates me as a tangible manifestation of this. I often think of my Horizons and Roads photographs as being at least partly about the grid and its manifestation on the landscape.