Train View (2014-present) is a series of photographs made during my weekly 2-hour Amtrak commute between Chicago and Bloomington/Normal, IL . The photographs record the beauty of the Midwest landscape in changing seasons and weather, and the ways in which the land is used and developed, revealing scenes and moments that are alternatively beautiful, bleak, and poignant. The views out of the train window include rivers, bridges, highways, housing developments, junkyards, graffiti, self-storage units, billboards, oil refinery, grain silos, wind farms, cemeteries, an old prison tower, and the limestone quarry where the prisoners once worked. They are elevated and constantly shifting back views of in-between spaces, not accessible from the streets or highways. The series also includes scenes inside the train of other passengers, streaked windows, and books read during the 150-mile journey, alternating between the outside and inside worlds.
Made from the rhythm and cycles of work and rail schedule, the series explores the way speed and movement of the train create dynamic perceptions of the landscapes, and links disparate moments and subject matters to explore multiple sense of time and space. By paying attention and photographing certain things over and over again, my goal is to make pictures that are precise and accurate in the tradition of documentary photographs, but at the same time create a parallel dream-like world of images of complex moods. This project aims to contribute to photography’s rich history in revealing the changing American social and natural landscapes, and to engage in critical reflections on our present moment.
One Hundred Views is a portfolio of 100 photographs from the series, inspired by Hokusai’s "One Hundred View of Mt. Fuji".
Train View: Jin Lee’s American Landscape in Motion
By Natasha Egan
Jin Lee’s Train View series (2014--present) provides passing glimpses of the artist’s weekly commuter train rides between Chicago and Bloomington/Normal, Illinois, capturing scenes ranging from the mundane to the subtly sublime. Her fragmented photographs—fluctuating from placid rural landscapes to oil refineries, from suburban backyards to prisons—illustrate the shifting Midwestern landscape. Referencing the tradition of documentary photography, Lee’s images reveal often overlooked scenes of American life—as mediated not only through the lens of her camera, but also the moving frame of the train window.
Lee’s evocative 150-mile journey is a study in contrasts; a photograph of an industrial factory is countered with a picture of idealized nature. Even in the scenes of almost uninterrupted wilderness, there are reminders of the movement of humans through these environments—in pictures of untouched winter fields, a stray power line still cuts through the otherwise idyllic composition of the scene.
These pictures obscure the distinctions between natural and manmade—while also blurring the passage of time. In one photograph taken at night, a building with a mural of an American flag stands in the foreground against a rural skyline of a single water tower. The flag is out of focus, distorted by the motion of the speeding train, a barely legible trace of Americana briefly observed in a desolate landscape. An indistinct water tower appears in another image, behind a red, white, and blue mural memorializing September 11th, with the text “America will not Forget!” centered in the frame. It is unclear which photograph was taken first, or if they were taken in the same location at all. The passage of time suggested in these photographs, much like the view from the train window, is often hazy.
The suggestion of stopping time and motion to portray a fleeting instance links to specific genres and traditions within the history of photography, including landscape, narrative, documentary, and street photography. Much like the street photographer, who seeks to portray a candid, unmediated encounter with their subject on the city streets, Lee similarly captures these moments of chance from her train window. The figures who occasionally appear in Train Views are often isolated, alone in their environments. Like the errant human figure sometimes captured in a Google Earth image, Lee’s subjects seem out-of-place in these already in-between, inaccessible spaces, only visible from the vantage point of the moving vehicle.
Of course, the human figure who is always implicitly present is Lee herself, the passenger/photographer. In a photograph of a suburban backyard at dusk, Lee's camera catches a mysterious lingering light at the edges of the frame. The shadowy figure of a man stands on the periphery of his property, unaware of the image being composed at that very moment. These tensions are what makes Lee’s work so intriguing: the solitary man, the lone passenger, both momentarily joined together, layered in a singular image—or at least until the train passes by.
Catalog essay for Views & Scenes exhibition, Chicago Cultural Center, 2022
Natasha Egan is the executive director of the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago (MoCP),