In Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road, his second book with the Ice Plant, Brooklyn-based photographer Tim Carpenter (born 1968) revisits the Central Illinois topography of his first monograph, Local Objects, with a sequence of 56 black-and-white, medium-format photographs, all made on a single winter morning.
Where Local Objects meandered this semi-rural Midwestern landscape through changing seasons, here Carpenter follows a straightforward path, taking the viewer on a two-hour walk from point A to point B. Nothing much happens along this narrative arc there are fallow fields, standing water, dormant trees, the occasional tire track on worn pavement yet Carpenter explores the stillness of this outdoor space with a palpable, almost erotic longing, discovering complex subtleties at every turn. The photographs in Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road are made with an intensity of attention and a lightness of touch.