Other than the restaurants and convenient stores which are opened for 24 hours a day, the streets of New York are also filled with car wash companies opened early in the morning. Mark Lyon from Hudson Valley is a frequent visitor at these overnight car wash places, but not because his needs his car to be washed, rather because he needs the space for his shoot.
“Bay Views” is an on going project by Lyon, in which the word “Bays” means both the car wash and the coast, representing this idea of the view from the shorelines. All the photos are taken from inside of the car wash, where the walls on either sides and the scenery outside are both included within his frames. As a result, his compositions are like landscapes trapped within a framed easel. Lyon admits that car wash owners and police officers often make things difficult for him, as he needs explain his intentions over and over again before they understand. In order to achieve the best photo quality, he is willing to spend hours in the car wash, just so the shadow and light is exactly how he wants it.
Whether or not he was deliberate in the choice of the car wash, the car wash and the scenery outside depicted in his photographs emphasize a sense of collective experience nonetheless. Even in the interior environment, the natural but fragmented outdoors are seen from the windows, revealing how there is always going to be an invisible barrier between us and nature in our modern life.
