Sterile white light attracted the attention of art major Jacob Bluestone '07 as he drove through a growing commercial district in Auburn, Maine. An accomplished photographer who uses a 6x12 medium-format camera that once belonged to his father, Bluestone decided to capture the strange reality of these nocturnal scenes for his senior exhibition thesis project.

A native of Huntington, N.Y., Bluestone's thesis project grew out of his recent exhibition, "Open Space: Photographs," a display that comprised his personal response to the American West. During a three-month exploration of the Great Plains, he traveled from Texas to Montana in search of the least densely populated spaces in the United States. Supported by an Otis Fellowship, he traversed 12,000 miles, doing his best to avoid major highways, he says, and exposed more than 100 rolls of film in capturing a sense of place.

"I am fascinated with wide-open space," says Bluestone, describing an interest shaped from growing up in close proximity to New York City, the most densely populated area in the country. But he has also unearthed an intrigue with "the generic aesthetic of urban development: crisp parking space delineations and pristine asphalt."

Returning to the Northeast in fall 2006, Bluestone was struck by a lack of available natural space. Taking a closer look at Lewiston and its environs, he realized that the manufactured spaces of primarily empty parking lots evoked emotions similar to those he had encountered out West.

"Visiting and revisiting selected lots over the course of the last two semesters has allowed me the opportunity to expose a beautiful normalcy that is commonly overlooked," the photographer says.