Ian Edward White: Townes Ferry Pike
For Ian Edward White, it seems that a map is less a grid of coordinates and more a constellation of
feelings. In his latest exhibition at the Baldwin Photographic Gallery, titled Townes Ferry Pike, White invites viewers to navigate a landscape that feels hauntingly familiar yet geographically elusive. Since arriving at Middle Tennessee State University in 2022, White has spent his time traversing the backroads of Middle Tennessee, from the quiet margins of McMinnville to the sun-drenched paths of Woodbury.
However, Townes Ferry Pike is not a literal documentary of these places. Instead, it is a fictional geography built from “California light” and the intuitive “rambling” of an artist seeking a specific emotional frequency of the place. Ahead of his show featuring 41 curated images, we connected with White to ask about the “magic” of the South, the transition of his own artistic identity, and why he chooses to make pictures about questions rather than answers.
MCR: The title Townes Ferry Pike refers to an “imagined road.” Why was it important for you to construct a fictional geography rather than a literal documentary of the towns you visited?
Ian Edward White [IEW]: I’ve been making place-specific work since 2018. With each project, the geographical and conceptual containers of a place—from the Oceanside Pier in San Diego, CA, to the city of Rochester, NY, to the region of Middle Tennessee—have become simultaneously more expansive in process and abstract in thinking. When I first started making pictures here in 2022, I genuinely had no idea it would become a long-term project. I felt like I needed to make as much work as possible with the seemingly small amount of time that I had. So, I just began driving in every direction, trying to find towns that had an indefinable, yet immediate, magic about them. An unmistakable presence. A place that I could see myself returning to time and again.
The title, Townes Ferry Pike, has always functioned more as a north star of emotion than as a specific geography. When I’m out photographing, I’m subconsciously asking myself if this feels like Townes Ferry Pike, rather than if it looks like it. Over time, my intuition of these feelings has become sharper, but when I was first starting, I was photographing as much as I possibly could to find direction and meaning.
I think the title is a bit more honest about my process, which is rambling, unpredictable, and intuitive. I want to put my viewer in the headspace of the work being of the South, with the South, but not necessarily about it. I think of David Lynch’s TWIN PEAKS, and how that was undoubtedly of the PNW (Pacific Northwest), with the PNW, but couldn’t be further about it. The potentialities that exist within “of” and “with” excite me more than the potentialities of “about”.
MCR: You’ve described the work as an “emotional mapping” of place. How does your personal transition—moving from San Diego and Rochester to becoming an MTSU faculty member—shape the emotional “coordinates” of this map?
IEW: I’m turning 30 this year, and I’m starting to see how every event, big or small, in my twenties has shaped how I move through the work now. So, I’m trying to be a little more grateful for all the times I was frustrated, lost, and confused during the process of making work. As hyperbolic as this is going to sound, it feels like the end of the world when you are facing these trials and tribulations as an artist. But without any of those moments occurring, I wouldn’t have felt the desire to get back out onto the road, to face the unknown, and continue to test whether meaning and direction are still possible to encounter. I was talking with a friend about this recently, and we laughed at how we both essentially ask ourselves, “Do you think you still got it in you? Huh?” That’s the one true constant in my practice, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
MCR: You seek “breath in the image” and a “palpable presence” in your subjects. When approaching strangers in places like McMinnville or Woodbury, how do you navigate that intimate moment between a photographer and a “wanderer”?
IEW: I try to be as direct, honest, and open as possible. Most of the time, I have either already seen the image play out in their performance, or I have an image in my mind’s eye that I want to see become real. It really depends on how the interaction unfolds. Sometimes, when neither of those two working modes reveals itself, I’ll try to be aware of what occurs naturally in conversation. I think of a Richard Benson quote a lot, where he says (and I’m paraphrasing here, so forgive me), “The world will always be smarter than you are.” I try to dive deep into my own curiosities and will come up for air at the very last second.
MCR: Many of your portraits are set against “engulfing natural settings.” How do you balance the human subject with the powerful, sometimes overwhelming landscape of Middle Tennessee?
IEW: I think of settings as stages where performance can be played out, or, more specifically, where the implications of a performance can be suggested, and the settings will either contextualize or radically decontextualize the presented scenario. I love to experiment with figures that amplify or contend with a setting, and vice versa. And I consider what I know about the scene being photographed in conversation with the questions I have about it. I make pictures about questions. The compositions heighten or abstract those questions. That’s the goal, at least.
MCR: The series is defined by the “haziness of a never-ending summer afternoon.” Could you discuss your use of color and light to create this sense of “collapsed time” or “temporal blurring”?
IEW: During one of my first studio visits at RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology), one of my teachers looked at my preliminary contact sheets of Rochester, NY, and said, “You seem to find California light everywhere you go.” I think the light that we grow up with is ingrained deep into our souls. That quality of warm late-afternoon light is my cross to bear. I can’t get away from it, even if I tried. There is something disorienting, intoxicating, and wonderful about that light. It makes me think of the responsibilities of the public-self finally shedding, the desires of the private-self beginning to bud, and the atmosphere loosening into something a bit more surreal.
MCR: Some of your images, like the abandoned shop in McMinnville with the “OPEN” sign and finger-drawn hearts, focus on “quiet margins.” What draws you to these specific sites of “transient joy” or “quiet solitude” over more traditional landmarks?
IEW: Part of the power of narrative is immersing yourself in a different world, especially if that one looks vaguely familiar to you, but you can’t quite pinpoint its positioning on a map. I look for spaces that reinvigorate the headspace of my teenage self, where I wanted to get away from it all. Where would I go? Would I park my car here? Would I walk down that hill? Or through that path? One of my colleagues saw the exhibition the other day, and he told me, “That’s where I grew up. It feels exactly like that.” I didn’t feel the need to ask him where he grew up, nor did he feel the need to ask me where the pictures were specifically made. What he saw in the work is the same sentiment I look for as I move through the world. Those spaces that nag at you, not necessarily because you’ve been to them before, but because there are deep emotions tethered to places that function very similarly.
MCR: The Baldwin Photographic Gallery is a prestigious space. How did you approach the sequencing of these 41 images to lead the viewer down your “imagined road”?
IEW: When I am out making images, sometimes I recognize that a subject or composition pairs well with another image I have already made. I think of long-term projects as an ongoing conversation of sorts. I am simultaneously whispering to the past, while shouting into the future—as Tommy Kha once said. This conversation unfolds in an ever-changing sequence of images, unashamedly organized in a PowerPoint presentation. Is my process of sequencing as romantic as small prints being laid out on the floor, the walls, or in a book dummy? Absolutely not. But it works for me. What you see in the gallery is a loose translation of that sequence, with the walls acting as stanzas or paragraphs of the larger conversation. There are certainly narrative tensions I considered for each wall, but I don’t want to make any concrete declarations. I think of my job as nudging a viewer into a ballpark of feelings, and then leaving them with total agency to find and declare meaning. I’m essentially handing them the keys. That’s where the conversation becomes multi-stable.
As White transitions from the solitary miles on the road to the public walls of the Baldwin Photographic Gallery, the “imagined road” of Townes Ferry Pike finally opens to the public. Through his use of temporal blurring and “collapsed time,” White has managed to capture a version of the South that exists somewhere between the private self and the public landscape—a place where the humidity of a Tennessee afternoon meets the sharp, nostalgic light of a West Coast upbringing.
Ultimately, the exhibition is an invitation to get lost. By refusing to provide a literal map, White encourages each visitor to bring their own memories and “deeply tethered emotions” to the gallery walls. He has provided the sequence and set the stage; now, as he puts it, he is handing the keys to the viewer, allowing the “multistable” conversation between the artist, the subject, and the spectator to truly begin.
Website: https://ianedwardwhite.com/
Insta: @ianedwardwhite
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