Alexa Cushing

Alexa Cushing is a photographer based out of Boston, MA. She has recently graduated from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, earning a BFA in Photography. Alexa travels by car and makes work about the rural New England area where she lives. She focuses on extracting a sense of magic from the everyday landscape, monumentalizing an otherwise dim backdrop. Alexa’s work has been exhibited at various locations around Massachusetts, as well as several online and print publications.

Deer Leg, Middleboro, 2018

Torn Fence, Brockton, 2017

Floating Pizza Box, Abington, 2018

Seeing Is Believing!

Growing up in rural New England, I have spent time observing a place that has been carved out by the impacts of passing time, harsh weather, and human presence. Relics of what has once existed are on display, revealing a tension that is tangled between the land and its current inhabitants. The residual energy of the past remains as a constant throughout the area— a place that was once defined by its working-class presence has grown to be fractured, leaving the possibility for something new to occur in its place. It becomes clear that there is an unmistakable value to a landscape that has succumbed to its own degradation.

It is within the subject matter’s ability to transcend its bleak presence and become a sight of its own that I am compelled to photograph. I am interested in how the ordinary and often innocuous rural New England landscape can become remarkable through its destruction. It is possible for an otherwise dim backdrop to be monumentalized and framed by a sense of significance that before did not exist. Extracting this sense of magic from the everyday realm dignifies a place that otherwise may fall victim to erasure.

Fallen Tree on Volvo, Abington, 2018