My first visits to North America in the 1960s revealed a wealth of experiences foreign to my world in northern England. The space, light, scale & enthusiasm of its land & peoples etched a profound mark into my subconscious.
After 15 years documenting the remnants of the rise and fall of Europe’s great cultures, I started to look further afield towards the new powers on the horizon ; India, Brazil & China. Over 2007/2008, 3 journeys to that last nation showed me the largest scale of infrastructure investment on the planet across China.
With the arrival of Barack Obama, I was ready to re-experience the US, hoping to taste & touch some of that nostalgia of my childhood.
What I discovered ranged from the surprising to the shocking. The world’s great superpower was now immersed in an economic battle of its own making as financial decisions made by the few were rapidly affecting the lives of the many.
The day Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009, I chose to begin my drive from the southern tip of Florida, through the Gulf coast, across Texas, to the west of Arizona & California. This region, known as the Sun Belt had long been viewed as the future for the development of the USA…in agriculture, immigration, housing & the military. With the decline of the north’s Rust Belt, the south was to be the future for American development.
The south was also the region traditionally the most seriously affected by seasonal changes & extremes of weather. Hurricanes Katrina, Ike & Gustav had left their mark and the droughts that swept Texas threatened to unleash the potential for major forest fires.
It appeared to me that the Sunbelt had become the Stormbelt.
The impact of economic crisis & environmental destruction frequently resulted in a very similar visual image, that of abandoned and destroyed homes, with all of the ingredients of the American Dream thrown across beaches and fields.
Encouraged at the start of the journey by photographer, Christopher Morris (who had just shot Obama’s inauguration that week) & Edward Burtynsky at the end of the drive, the first person to view the complete work was Bruce Davidson in early 2009. He & then later, Simon Norfolk, insisted the project be developed as a book on the current state of the US. A year after completing the first trip, Burtynsky invited me to his studio to view & discuss the images. He recalled the conversation from when we met a year earlier in Los Angeles, that I had spoken about the shocking demonstrations of environmental discord through the region…this aspect attracted & intrigued him.
Moving into 2011, I was curious to re-visit the region to see what changes may have come about after Obama had taken charge in his new position. A meeting with Aperture director, Chris Boot, pushed me on to take that trip again. This second time, I recording the conversations with the people I met, moments & encounters & additionally, added video into the project.These sequences that expanded on the themes of the first trip in 2009.
The release of the new multimedia ebook format allowed me to integrate these new ingredients into the creation of Stormbelt.
After 16,000 kilometers, I am left with an impression of a resilient people with a continual hope to improve their lives unaware that their very actions and choices have brought about the catastrophe of financial and ecological storms that increasingly will challenge their future.
Robert Leslie Biography
Born in in Leeds, Yorkshire, UK & relocated to Canada during his adolescent years. Returning to Europe in his early twenties, his principal creative output was as a musician, composer & sound engineer. Relocating to Paris in 1990, he moved into the world of Photography. Shooting and producing in the both the press (Connaissance Des Arts, MuseArt & Vogue), media (Gedon France, Real World Records) & performance (Peter Gabriel, Robert Wilson, Robert Lepage). In 1997, he was the first composer commissioned by the national museums of France to create a sound installation piece for the Rodin Museum’s “Towards the age of Bronze” exhibition working with Chevalier of the Ordre de la Légion d’Honneur Architect, Bruno Moinard. The last decade has seen Leslie as the principal photographer for the TED.com organisation and the in documenting the world’s great photographers (featured at Paris Photo in 2008) with his www.1000portraits.net project.
As an outsider with an insider’s accent, Leslie plans to develop the themes of environmental and social discord in the US over the next decade. Stormbelt was a featured exhibition in the 2012 Contact Photography festival in Toronto, Canada this past May/June.
