After Wides made the image of a car graveyard Near
Catskill Creek in 2004, she learned Thomas Cole
had painted Catskill Creek in an adjacent spot
in 1845. This coincidence inspired the series
I, Kaaterskill, weaving a dialogue between an
American wilderness idealized by mid-19th
century painters and the imperiled environment
we live in today. When Wides first showed these
early photographs, she paired them with
reproductions of Hudson River School paintings
made in the same vicinity.


This inquiry into the forces that animate a
place is a through-line in much of my work. Wides is
inspired not only by the historic and cultural
influences that vibrate in a setting, but how
we gather up these bits of data to form an
idea of a landscape—or as Merleau-Ponty
writes of Cezanne, to depict “an object in
the act of appearing, organizing itself before
our eyes.” These words articulate Wides' desire
to capture the immersive act of beholding:
through manipulations of light and space in her
photographs, Wides seeks to slow down the moment
of observing so we can see deeply into the
meaning of a landscape and contemplate
where we are.