Shawn Biessel is a photographer based out of Omaha, NE, focusing on human-altered landscapes including land use and urban sprawl.
With winter feeling like it’s slowly becoming a thing of the past, I had to take advantage of a storm opportunity for some wandering around midtown and downtown Omaha. Four hours, eight miles, and 400 photos later in 0F/-30F windchill: here are a few shots. The tips of my fingers are still numb two days later.
At 174th Street in west Omaha, an old red brick two lane highway emerges from between two glitzy looking car dealerships like a ghost. It ends unceremoniously at an intersection, cut off by new development and the Dodge freeway.
This old bit of road is a remnant of the Lincoln Highway, one of (if not the first) transcontinental highways in the US. The three mile section of road between 174th and 203rd streets in west Omaha near Elkhorn contains much of the original brick from the paving effort of the 1920s. It’s an interesting slice of history and it feels like a small miracle it still exists today, given the gold rush of new housing development in this part of Nebraska.
Several dichotomies struck me as I walked the old 1920s brick pavement on two separate recent outings. The automobile culture that this early highway helped foster was also its demise. It’s beautifully ironic the way the road ends between two car dealerships. The road that helped spur development in the area also helps preserve small vestiges of something that feels like wilderness. A few native prairie plants line the old road corridor. A red-tailed hawk swooped over my head at one point. A remarkable silence envelopes its more isolated sections. It’s heartbreaking that in west Omaha, a person must travel old road and power line corridors to interact with nature.
This ghost from the past feels like a reminder that perhaps we should slow down and develop land with a little more care and intention.
It’s often worth re-tracing worn paths. Yesterday, I wandered into downtown Omaha, using a route I had taken many times. I was worried before I left that it would be a boring walk. That I wouldn’t see anything new. What I actually found was the opposite: subtle changes worth documenting and a dynamic sky that occasionally belched flurries of snow. Often, my walks result in few to no interesting images. Other times I find a few keepers. Either is okay. It’s the getting out and doing that matters.
It’s possible some of images below will make it into the Fronts + Sides series (working title), but I think I need to sit on them for awhile longer to see if they stay with me.
A coil of old sod lies like a dead animal on a bulldozed landscape below power lines. Dried mud preserves tire tracks near a group of identical new homes. A sculpture that used to sit downtown now has a commanding view of new housing developments. These are a few images from two trips I made out to west Omaha in the first few months of 2023 that you’ll find below. As I post these, I’m realizing these new additions to the Omaha Sprawl series feel particularly bleak and apocalyptic. Maybe that’s because snow has been a little hard to find this winter in Omaha. Or maybe it’s a reflection of the general direction of Nebraska these days. This is increasingly becoming a state hostile to anyone who’s not male and heterosexual.
There’s an interesting dichotomy that plays out with these new developments, which I’ve touched on before in these blog posts. On one side, these homes represent new opportunities. You can get a large new home geared toward a family for relatively cheap. At some level, it’s the American Dream, even if the dream part is born from development run amok. Yet, oppression is very much on the horizon. Spring and Summer are coming, and with it, harsh sun to bake shade-less streets and homes. And new laws which promise to wash that American Dream away with the spring rains.
A few weeks ago, I made an impromptu trip to Marcus, Iowa, to see the place my great grandparents raised their children. A howling frigid wind and the season’s first snowflakes greeted my arrival. Following some directions out of town, I came over a little hill with my car and saw the place. An old farm house among a group of leafless trees. I wasn’t positive but it felt right. This had to be the place.
The old farm struck me more than I thought it would. The stories my mom, grandmother, and great uncle tell started to make more sense. They emerged from the weird abstract place of stories you hear as a kid and became a reality. In the peeled paint, perseverance through the Great Depression. The looming wind turbines, unstoppable passage of time and change. Out the driveway and onto the gravel road, the kids who would serve in World War II, become parents, writers, nurses, artists, and schoolteachers.
Photos from the area around Blair, NE.
Adair Rest Area along I80 has this pretty fun windmill-themed picnic area.
Photos from a walk just north of downtown Omaha on July 23, 2022.
Photos from west Omaha. June 26, 2022. Seems like the housing market must be hot when foundations are selling adjacent to huge power lines.
Earlier this week, I made a somewhat impromptu trip to the LA area to visit family. This provided the opportunity to explore the metro area with my Great Uncle Dan on a photography expedition. We paid a visit to some old haunts including the industrial area around Wilimington near Long Beach: certainly not the touristy parts of LA. I feel a lot of gratitude for being able to see these areas of the city with Dan, who’s lived in the area for more than 50 years. Long enough to see the metro completely swallow the basin.
The industrial areas we explored seemed bleaker than they felt in the past for some reason. Perhaps that is a reflection of the place the country is in today. Our failures to provide affordable housing and address climate change being a few of them. The writing on a dumpster beneath a refinery (?) seemed especially poignant: “the sky is falling.” Not sure there is much arguing with Chicken Little today.
