Richard K. Kent

The pictures in Off Route 42 document a place in New York state that I have known since childhood. The series offers glimpses of a house set in woods, the surrounding woods and open meadows, and the rural, hard-scrabble environment beyond the immediate woods—most of which has changed surprisingly little over the decades. Along the two-lane highway—Route 42—that leads to the rural road one takes to get to the house, certain small businesses have come and gone and the one country church, in the hamlet of Rio, some years ago folded, the building sold; the structure remains, though—locked up, the bell silent in its belfry. What I have recorded in the pictures is inevitably bound up with many recollections or associations with lives that touched my own.

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Nineteen pictures from the series were included in the solo exhibition Layered Time: Photographs at Lancaster Galleries in Lancaster, PA (August 11-September 3, 2022).

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