Somewhere in the middle

Somewhere in the middle. 2013.

A strip of red roof and brick rooms sits low in the frame while the sky takes almost everything else, a big empty sweep of blue that makes the motel feel even more remote. Sun-bleached plastic chairs wait outside each door like stand-ins for people who have already moved on, leaving only their shape behind. I was thinking about the in-between parts of travel, the towns you pass through and forget, and how these small, repeated units of room and door and chair hold so many brief lives. The scene is bright and cheerful on the surface, but the scale tips toward loneliness, a thin line of human shelter holding its ground under a sky that does not really notice it.

24 mm • f/1.8 • 1/8000 sec, ISO 100