Shawn Biessel is a photographer based out of Omaha, NE, focusing on human-altered landscapes including land use and urban sprawl.
“There was only the enormous, empty prairie, with grasses blowing in waves of light and shadow across it, and the great blue sky above it, and birds flying up from it and singing with joy because the sun was rising. And on the whole enormous prairie there was no sign that any other human being had ever been there.” —Laura Ingalls Wilder
These images, presented in 16:9 black and white, are possible contributions to the Omaha Sprawl project. Taken January and February 2024.
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.
These black diamond-shaped signs are fast becoming a motif in my Omaha urban sprawl series. Beyond these scarecrow-like figures lie planned but unfinished avenues leading to eventual homes. There is a dualism about them that intrigues me. On one hand, they are harbingers of new opportunity: new homes, new lives, new stories. On the other, they are a momentary self-imposed dead-end to movement that seems to have no limits.
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.
I carry a relatively large camera, and often in places where people aren’t used to seeing one. As I walked through a new housing development on Omaha’s outskirts, a man standing on a lawn with his family asked me, “what are you taking pictures of?” Maybe he was a little creeped out by me.
“The housing development over there,” I replied, waving toward a new development, which was largely just a bulldozed field.
“For fun?” he asked quizzically. “Yeah,” I replied.
“Yeah,” I replied.
Up until the last part, none of that was a lie. Photographing sprawl on Omaha’s outskirts isn’t particularly fun. It’s mostly frustrating and a lot of work. The subject matter is depressing. It requires a lot of driving around and a lot of fairly uninteresting views before any pay off. Speaking of that part, I don’t get paid for any of this. Yet, I keep going out.
In truth, I’ve never found photography particularly fun. Any of it. And this is probably the activity in which I am most passionate about. What gives? I do find it rewarding and exceedingly challenging. Most importantly, I don’t have choice in the matter. I have to do it. The chase for that elusive frame that can tell an engaging story is a truly addictive one. And it gets worse the more I do it.
Photographing the sprawl on Omaha’s outskirts feels like an important project and something I can’t turn my back to. I don’t anticipate my work will sway any hearts and minds about land use. I’m a pretty terrible self-promoter, so people probably won’t even see these images. But I want there to be some sort of record. For the people that do run across them, I want people to think about these landscapes: what they were; what they’re becoming. What they will be. Who occupies the land? Who gets to decide what happens to landscapes and their inhabitants? Not fun stuff, by any means, for myself or the viewer.
That all being said, I present these images from west Omaha.
This field next to the North Omaha power plant caught my eye. The juxtapositions with the stands and the power infrastructure is a fun juxtaposition, I think. And the seat colors are lovely. The second photo here was initially the one I thought was stronger, but now I’m leaning toward the first due to the colors and leading lines.
