This is my mother, in her yellow 1967 Plymouth, Belvedere convertible.  Top down, a beautiful late spring day and she is about to drive away. I don’t know where she was going and if you asked her, she probably didn’t know either…just out for a ride in the county.

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Often, I would go on a drive with her. I loved to ride through the countryside, away from the sterile newness of suburbia. I loved the worn homes, barns, farms, old churches, the relics of the rural landscape. I loved watching green fields, rolling hills, and pastures dotted with cows and horses pass by my window. We would just drive, wander with no destination in mind. This is how my passion for wandering the roadways of upstate New York began.

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Each summer for the past 12 years I have returned to my native upstate New York to wander along the roadways and photograph the towns and villages where my ancestors had lived. This area of northern New York is rich in history and once had thriving dairy and lumber industries, supported by a transportation network of canals and rivers. This has all changed and the area struggles to reinvent itself and survive.

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In this work, I photograph the relics of a time past, a history at risk of being erased, and the unique and sometimes poignant sense of place.