When photographer Michael Sherwin took his first photograph of a shopping center in Morgantown, West Virginia in 2011, he didn’t know he would begin a project that would take about a decade to complete.
The shopping center captured his attention because it was built on an 800-year-old sacred burial ground and village site associated with the Monongahelan culture. Learning the history of the site and realizing there was a wealth of history he didn’t know about the land we now call the United States of America, he decided to take more pictures.
“I now have a project and a book that has been exhibited around the country and it all started just less than a mile from my house in Morgantown, West, Virginia,” Sherwin said. “Just the idea that things that we see every day can have so much more history than what we realize.”
Sherwin used a large format camera and 4x5 inch film for each of the photographs. He identified important sites to indigenous people and through grants was able to capture the images. Some of the images, however, were unplanned. While traveling to a site in Ohio, he saw some roadkill on the shoulder of the road. The red fox stood out to him, and he had to capture the picture.
“You don't see a lot of wildlife like that in Ohio anymore. I find foxes in particular quite beautiful,” Sherwin said.
Viewers will recognize some of the landmarks, like Devils Tower in Wyoming or Monument Valley in New Mexico. Others are not as recognizable but are significant to an indigenous culture. His photographs work to tell the story of the history of the sites and how they relate to the people who hold the sites as important. He also wants to shed light on what has happened to indigenous people over the years.
“So, there's a little bit of push and pull in the work like that that I hope opens the work up to both beauty but also sort of disgrace and some of the struggles that have happened throughout this country's history,” Sherwin said.
The name of the exhibit is a lesson in itself. Sherwin says he didn’t title the project until later. He realized that many of the photographs had “vanishing points” in them as a road or stream vanished in the distance. The more he learned and the deeper he went into the history of the sites and the indigenous people, the more he learned about himself, he says.
“You know, vanishing points don't ever exist. The deeper you go into the landscape, the more you learn, the more you see. And that's certainly what happened in my case,” he said.
Using a large format camera is much different than a typical digital camera or a smartphone. The camera was invented in the early 19th century. Each photograph cost about $10 to shoot and process. He would expose the film for multiple seconds and only take one or two shots per site.
“So, I’m fully invested in those images, and I spend a lot of time at each site figuring out how and where I want to photograph and why,” Sherwin said.
He does have a book available that he published in 2021. It includes the photographs and the history of each site. It’s available for purchase here.
As viewers see the pictures and read the history, Sherwin hopes they have a similar experience to what he had while making the project.
“Really kind of an awakening, maybe an enlightening, an educational experience, but also an inspirational experience,” he said. “And that you walk out of the gallery, or you set the book down and you look at the landscape with a different mindset.”