Keith Yahrling
I have set out on a number of photographic pilgrimages through the area of the original thirteen colonies of the United States of America. This historic boundary extends from Maine to Georgia and from the Appalachian Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. Within this boundary the American Revolution was staged, and is the area of concentration for my ongoing project, For the Revolution.
In my travels, I visit the sites of Revolutionary War battles to view a landscape that is embedded with the convictions of soldiers that drew them to fight. As time progressed, these beliefs dispersed from the battlefields and went on to influence other individuals and the surrounding landscape. Because of this dispersion, I explore the surrounding landscape in search of instances that illustrate how contentious notions of freedom and liberty are represented in the everyday actions of individuals and how those grand notions are subtlety embedded in the American landscape.
My interests in these themes formed at an early age, from my childhood explorations of a Revolutionary War battlefield located in my hometown of National Park, New Jersey to the rare stories my father would tell me from his tour in Vietnam. My pilgrimage through America’s original thirteen colonies represents both a desire to understand the democratic roots of my country and my own personal heritage, because the two are inseparable.
