Western Rider: Views from a Car Window

Forsman is a painter, and this collection of photos—shot from his truck while looking for places to paint—has a compelling resonance. Parallels with another “glancing” body of work, Robert Frank’s The Americans, are well-founded. There’s a poignant existential beauty in looking at landscape this way—out the windshield. No Grand Canyons, no Yellowstones, no Yosemites; just that damn cow in the middle of the road in the middle of nowhere, road kill, a pickup and a semi crossing the salt flats, housing starts, suburban sprawl and cops in the rearview. Perhaps, lurking in the blurriness—with deer darting across the two-lane and snow swirling in like popcorn—are the metaphors for our lives “out here.”