Alex Schupak

Cold Land

Landscapes · 2019–2024

American landscapes focused on placelessness. The camera was first a tool for surveying and labeling land. The lens cut up the earth, deciding where one thing ended and the next began. The traces of that human machinery peek into these images, ready to crop, label, and multiply across the country, matter-of-fact and unbothered.

A highway guardrail in the foreground, behind it dense bare-branched trees and a low sound wall, in black and white.
W-Beam along I-95, 2023
A black flatbed pickup truck parked at the edge of a leafless winter treeline at dusk.
Truck along the Roadside, 2023
A snow-dusted rocky shoreline under heavy fog, a long row of utility poles and wires receding into gray, the sea at right.
New England Beach, 2024
A row of seven pink portable toilets lined up at night against a black sky, a faint moon at right.
Portable Toilets, 2023
An aerial view of gridded farmland in black and white, the blurred shadow of an airplane cast across one field.
Plane Shadow over Farmland, 2019
An aerial view from above the clouds looking down through fog onto a highway interchange and sprawl below.
Fog over Phoenix, 2023