Lab Gallery for July 2023: Nathan Pearce

Project Statement
When I was 18 years old I packed my bags and left rural Illinois. It had been my home my entire life, but I thought in leaving I would find the perfect place for myself elsewhere. In the city everything and everyone I knew was very different from what I knew back home and yet at the same time familiar. The wild and restless days of my youth were in full swing. But when I awoke those mornings I still expected to see my old Midwestern life.

Where I was living wasn’t exactly the wrong place for me, and at its core my life wasn’t drastically different, but it wasn’t home.

I came back home to live almost a decade later. I still have no idea if this time I will stay for good, I don’t know if that will ever happen.

Some nights when I lay down in my bed and close my eyes I fantasize that I didn’t ever return. I dream that I could get right back up and go over to my corner bar in the city and have a drink looking out on the crowded street.

But I’m not there. I’m here. In the country.

Now it’s just after harvest time, my favorite time of year. The fields are almost cleared and I’m barefoot on my porch with a beer in my hand. I can see for miles.

This project is about a time in my life when I can feel the tension between home and away.

Artist Statement

Nathan Pearce (born 1986) is an artist based in Southern Illinois. Pearce works in book and zine making and photography. Pearce’s publications are held in several artists' book and library collections including those at MoMA, The Met, Museum of Contemporary Photography, and the Center for Creative Photography. His work has been exhibited in solo shows at the PhotoNola festival, Cedarhurst Center for the Arts, Nizhniy Tagil Museum of Fine Arts and The Rangefinder Gallery in Chicago. He has been published in over 200 books, zines and exhibition catalogs; as well as online in The Huffington Post, The British Journal of Photography, and Juxtapoz.

Pearce captured this work using a Fujifilm XE1 and a Canon 5D.

Stop by the Lab Gallery for the month of July to see images up close.

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Check out the images featured in the gallery below: