Kevin Scott
Kevin Scott is a photographer based in Seattle, Washington. He has thru-hiked both the Pacific Crest and Colorado trails, and in 2021 he made a series of portraits of Pacific Crest Trail thru-hikers. His current work uses medium and large-format film to photograph Seattle and Puget Sound as the city changes around its most familiar views. He scans his own film and makes his own prints.
Artist statement
I photograph landscapes and cityscapes, deep in the backcountry of the West and around my home in Seattle. What draws me to these places is their ever-changing nature. I like revisiting areas to see how both the conditions and the place itself have changed.
In the city, that change is easy to see. Old buildings are demolished and new ones go up, constantly reshaping the skyline. Landscapes may seem more permanent, but that permanence is fragile. With climate change and drought, a fire, flood, or landslide can rework a familiar landscape in the blink of an eye.
Even without those events, smaller changes are always happening. Pioneer trees in new forests make way for longer-lived, shade-tolerant varieties. Viewpoints come and go as foliage grows in. Stone is smoothed by the passage of people visiting an area. These changes are part of what keeps me coming back.
I have moved many times throughout my life, often to wildly different locations. Those moves have made me aware of how much my surroundings shape my experience, and how little stays the same. Childhood trips with my family to national parks and my experiences on the Pacific Crest Trail helped build my love for the landscapes of the West.
I work primarily with film in view cameras of various formats. My photographs are a way of paying attention to these places and recording something of them as they are when I return.