‘Outbound to Sunset’ is a project about the outskirts of a city as seen from a 1st floor apartment window in the Sunset District of San Francisco. The project records observations of the relationships between the rhythms of public life and anonymous individuals that inhabit or pass through a place. The Sunset District is situated on the western edge of the city next to the Pacific Ocean and was originally called ‘The Outside Lands’ in the 19th Century. Before 1900 the sunset consisted of rolling sand dunes, scrubland and sparsely inhabited tract homes. Over the 20th century the Sunset developed into suburban area of stucco housing and quasi-Spanish colonial architecture reflecting the cultural diversity of the inhabitants.
The geographical location of the Sunset is significant to this project; it’s about as far west as you can go until you reach the ocean. On a symbolic level this signifies the edge of the western world, a place where the sun sets. The district has been referred to as a place that embodies ‘the end of America’s Manifest Destiny’ suggesting dialectic tension between closure, finality and Californian optimism. Photography’s ability to capture peripheral views and fleeting observations is employed here as a tool to decode the relationship between the street, the rhythms of public life and the interiority of people passing by. Captured on film, a certain spirit of place or ‘genius loci’ is embodied by strangers who walk or commute to the ocean engaging in the cyclic and repetitive rhythms of sunrises, sunsets and the banal activities of urban life in an American city.
The project reflects on Henri Lefebvre’s reflective writings on the city and like the ‘Critique of Everyday Life’ and his final book ‘Rhythmanalysis’, attempts to capture the innately temporal character of the street and identify the spirit of a place through the arrested movement of people.
“It is to be noted that a deserted street at four o’clock in the afternoon has as strong a significance as the swarming of a square at market or meeting times.”
Mark Adams is a photographer whose practice and research is concerned with landscape representation. His work explores the cultural forces that impact upon landscapes as well as the personal narratives that are woven into everyday places. Over the past 20 years Mark has exhibited in galleries and museums the United States, Europe and the UK. His work appears in Paris Lit Up magazine, Next Level, Der Greif magazine and recently in the American Landscape publication 'Observations in the Ordinary'. He is member of Millennium Photographers Agency and currently lives in North Tyneside.