Godshomemovies.org is the ever-evolving collection of images and words from Shelby Marie Skumanich. It is organized in Categories (major) and tags (minor) by state and by town, respectively, as well as larger, vaguer suggestions about how the photographs work together to tell a story. Her ongoing image collecting and re-photographing examines the minutiae of the lived environment and the landscape of Americana. Working primarily in central and southeastern Pennsylvania, she sees place defined in its details; the valley she was raised in and the area she currently inhabits serve as her subject matter. Seeking to illuminate the links between personal and national history, her tidily composed photographs are a means to find narrative threads in day-to-day life and the way place is simultaneously changing and unchanging. Her work follows in the traditions of such photographers as Walker Evans, William Eggleston, Alec Soth, Frank Gohlke and stems from the New Topographies school landscape photography. From her experience, an image is rife with potential when the mundane quietly becomes the strange and the serene.

“I am at war with the obvious.” – William Eggleston

Shelby Marie Skumanich is a photographer, observer, collector, thinker and aspiring apiarist. She grew up in a small town where the north and west branches of the Susquehanna River meet. She is a graduate of the Art Institute of Boston, with a BFA in photography. Currently, she is attempting freelance photography as a means to make a living. In her free time, she obsessively gathers and catalogs moss for her terrarium project, Pale Green Things.  She would like her future to include a photography career, an old house, a published book, a small pack of dogs, a brood of laying hens, several beehives, her partner and an MFA. She keeps a clean house, sews with significant skill and can make a mean casserole.

Find her at the following places.

gmail | flickr | twitter | g+ | etsy

“Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference.” – Robert Frank