#mossless 4

What I Bought (Mossless 4 in collaboration with Charlotte Cotton)

Charlotte Cotton: I can see, in a way, that Mossless operates as a discursive publication, and it shares similar strategies to the way ICP works in terms of bringing together things that were never intended to be together...it’s an inherently radical act to do that.

Romke Hoogwaerts: Yes! And you know, from a publisher’s standpoint, it’s almost bad business to keep changing the kind of genre that you’re working with [laughs]...but I feel like that’s where the most fun is had, and I’m interested in photography in general, so instead of sticking to one concept or one style, I want to try to hatch everything together and see where there’s convergence. I think that’s where we sometimes find some of the most interesting ideas.

This is the official poster for Mossless 4, which you can get ahold of on our Kickstarter page — with a discount if you get it as a bundle!

MOSSLESS: Who are all these people?

Bobby Scheidemann: These are all commuters stuck in rush hour traffic on I-35 in Austin, TX as they drive home after work.

ML: It looks like your imitating a surveillance camera. What was your vantage point?

BS: Yes, I really liked the idea of trying to be a traffic camera. At this project's conception I had just been to a Trevor Paglen lecture at Texas State University and I was looking at Walker Evan's Many Are Called and Sophie Calle's following series [Suite Venitienne]. I thought that there maybe was a conversation in there that I could have and started walking along the highway. It took a couple tries but my final vantage point ended up being on a bridge that overlooks the highway as it passes under it.

ML: How many have you taken? Is this still ongoing?

BS: I've taken a couple thousand pictures. I don't have the exact number on hand. I had to put the project on hold since the process of editing and selecting images was starting to overwhelm me. It took me a couple of months to edit down to about 14 portraits for a show I did last May at ATM Galleries called Together at Sunset. I do like the idea of revisiting the project every year or so for a week since that would produce about 1500 pictures that I could work through.

ML: Did anyone ever notice you?

BS: Actually a few people noticed me from time to time. One of my favorite photographs from the series is of a commuter who is photographing me (with a smartphone camera flash) as I photographed her, radio hosts were talking about a guy standing on the highway making pictures, and this one time someone called the cops on me because they thought I was a jumper which led to a slightly sad conversation about the state of Austin's infrastructure. I was told that no one is paying attention on the road and nothing is going to get fixed.