Bio:

Tyler Robbins is a MFA candidate at University of Wisconsin Madison. His primary medium is photography. When he is not behind a lens or at a computer he partakes in the rigors of suburban and family life. He enjoys cold beer and hot grills.

Statement:

These images depict the edge of town. A clashing of landscape types. It has been a place of interest to many photographers. When I made them I was thinking of Art Sinsabaugh as well as images from New Topographics. These images are suburban as much as they are Midwestern. My immediate surroundings are in the midst of development. The agrarian landscape is being reduced to subdivisions, big box and what's left might be remnants or hobby farms. That's progress as they say. For me, it's home. While gas rises above four dollars a gallon, we continue to pursue the American dream. Perhaps rising fuel cost will alter this expansions although I tend to think that people will simply alter their practices. These panoramics are a beginning for me. They are the external reality of how millions of people live. What are their habits? How do the habits of this population need to change to persist?

These are the questions I am trying to answer. If I can't make an algorithm, and solve for X, maybe I can at least come to terms with my own impact. Green technology is a buzz word. It's driving a new economy, and as much as I embrace the results, I wonder how much of this could be solved by just taking a closer look at our own lifestyles and maybe being a little less lazy. Efficiency is a holy grail for engineers, and often in nature, so why should we strive to do the same?