God to Go West
by Daniel George
portfolio shortlisted call 'URBANAUTICA INSTITUTE AWARDS 2020', 2020
Category: Anthropology and Territories
God to Go West explores the contemporary landscape of Utah in relationship to the state’s religious history. After their arrival to the area in the mid-1800’s, Mormon settlers and their progeny named, or in many cases renamed, more places and geographic features than any other group or people--directly referencing their books of scripture, the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Because names have the ability to mediate qualities and meaning attached to a place and are a vital part of individual and collective memory and identity, it is evident that their intention was to create a utopia by association. My photographs are an investigation of this romanticized notion, and the effect that language, religion, and history has had on land use and interpretation in this region in the American West. In the visual tradition of the Western photographic surveys, I am documenting a place that is paradoxically defined by idyllic optimism, and characterized by unavoidable incongruity.