Phonehenge

Interesting photos often come out of nowhere. I've been working on a series of images called "The Road North". My main interest is to photograph the ebb and flow of life - capturing the wave-like nature of our existence. In Canada, we have this strange habit of disappearing into the country to the north of us each and every week-end to ski, camp, canoe or cottage (yes, in Canada, to cottage is a verb). Motorists jam the highway on Friday night and Sunday night, up and down the road in a weekly migration. They are intent on their destination and often don't notice the odd things by the side of the road. But, I do.

It might be a particularly funky barn tumbling down despite the efforts of the farmer. Or, perhaps a white house on white snow. Or, a sloping barn roof pointing at the moon. Or, an old tour boat sitting on someone's lawn. Each of these images tells a story that begs to be captured.

One day, I was driving along a country road on my way home from the cottage and I happened to spot something very odd out of the corner of my eye. I parked the car and walked into a farmer's field and found this image:


It looked like someone had started to buy up old Brit phone booths (now a protected species in the UK) with a view to fixing them up and selling them as decorations. A neighour in our area has one half way down his driveway. For some reason, the project looks to have been abandoned.

I was struck by the beauty of the rusty phone booths, the mystery of their presence in a farmer's field in Canada and their resemblence to Stonehenge. Who knows, an archeologist might stumble on these in the future and speculate that they were arranged in a circle for religious reasons.

Hence the title of the work: Phonehenge.