This diverse collection of photos and video is a hybrid of both historical processes and emerging technologies to examine identity through the lens of a mixed-race, Japanese-American. The asphalt-emulsified roads he takes to work, having spent childhood summers in his mother’s birthplace in Japan, and the countryside backdrop of his paternal family’s generational wood shop all converge to fortify Clark’s understanding of self; one that is deeply connected to land, labor, and material. 

Through the use of rich blacks and high contrast, Clark harnesses his profound longing for Japan when photographing simultaneously tender and distant images of the heavily industrialized landscapes of Los Angeles. He often wonders, when standing in the water in Southern California, if the same water has touched the land in Japan. A single, color photograph of the Pacific Ocean serves as a metaphoric link and boundary between the United States and Japan.

This series of work is fully engrossed in the structure, tactility, and damage of the material in its compositions. As the whole of a parking lot gets broken down and fragmented, readied to be recycled, piles and piles of asphalt chunks and concrete can be seen from any freeway or industrial area of a city. Focusing on this urban ephemera, Clark recontextualizes the parking lot and its significance as an urban banal utility. Captured by a shoegazing gesture, Clark’s images complicate scale and push back up at the viewer, suggesting they are reflections of the sky or celestial objects.