W.M. Hunt

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“Home again and the streets are not much cleaner

And the quaint old south side scenery

Is quaint no more

Just older than before.”

-Lyrics by Randy Newman, “So Long Dad”

It isn’t that there’s no place like it, there is no home.  As an adult, that is what I have to offer to the conversation.  I do like the journeys of The Lost Boys of contemporary photography, with among others, Alec Soth, Todd Hido as well as Doug Dubois who doesn’t search beyond his childhood home in his “All the Days and Nights” and Mike Brodie chasing along with train hoppers in his “A Period of Juvenile Prosperity”.  I suppose one could even include Stephen Shore, another photo guy in love with the open road. 

The work of McNair Evans makes my heart sing not in a nostalgic way but rather with an ache, a longing for a glimpse of possibility, a connection.  Thomas Wolfe, a son of North Carolina like Evans, was right, “You Can’t Go Home Again.”  Ironically people imagine that the metaphorical, mythical road leads outwards and onwards.  Maybe it just loops around a tree and heads back right to where you began.  Whatever you thought might be there is not.  It may be about walking long enough.  

The search is about self and self discovery, self awareness, selfishness not some imagined pot of gold.  Upon discovering it, one’s  “eureka” should be written in lower case and without any exclamation.  

The Evans’ landscape above is so good, not only is there a fine looking road, but the artist has been clever and must take credit for the puff of smoke on the right hand side of the frame.  He says that is his punctum*1, here an incongruent, unexpected detail.  Maybe all of our vision is hazy as we look for clarity.

In the past several years, Evans has been “In Search of Great Men," his travelogue of Amtrak passengers on their way to who knows where.  Lately the train seems to have been in the station as he sorts out the journey.

Lewis Carroll, “Alice in Wonderland” is often misquoted as “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there”.  

The exchange is actually as follows,

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the <Cheshire> Cat.

“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

*1 Artist Talk with McNair Evans and Susan Worsham, Jan 29, 2021, LSU Museum of Art 

©2021

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