People in the American West seem to be stuck in the process of processing Place. Piles of graduated gravel, evaporation pools, fences, laser levels, city grids, tires on fences, billboards; they are all ways of organizing that which, at least phenomenologically, require no organization. The conundrum is: we need structure to make meaning. - Levi Jackson
Combining photography and installation and using an interdisciplinary approach to his work, Jackson’s work revolves around the Western Landscape, exploring themes of myth, truth, and fabrication, with a nod to performance. For the works included in Lay of the Land, Jackson specifically considered the way that cities are parceled and the way that acreage is measured and remeasured in an attempt to organize it and ultimately sell it. Through photography, he challenges the historical perceptions of the West by pairing it with contemporary understanding. For Jackson, photography is a tool that generates barriers (the four walls of the frame, focal distance, fractions of a second, etc) that ultimately give us a more digestible view; existentially, photography is used out of necessity to place ourselves in a landscape where we feel out of place.