Texans have an insatiable thirst for the photos of (you guessed it) Texas. Lucky for us, we’re living in a golden age of Lone Star imagery. Just look at Instagram, where many of the state’s most celebrated photographers supply us with unending streams of boundless vistas, open roads, big skies, and Longhorn cattle wandering in splashy fields of wildflowers. I’m here for all of them. Crank up the saturation, click upload, and feed those scenes from the High Plains and “Abandoned East Texas”straight into my veins.

Photographer Trent Lesikar is traveling down a different road altogether. In his ongoing project The Shape of Texas, Lesikar documents the kinds of places and objects most of us drive past without noticing.

Through his lens, the banal is beautiful: He explores both tiny towns and big cities where he draws connections between Texas’s most potent symbols, like football, pumpjacks, and religious iconography. Lesikar also has a keen eye for capturing different eras of Texas within a single frame. He likes to play with juxtapositions where elements of Texas’ frontier mythology coexist with, say, modern skyscrapers. “I think of it like stacking time on time,” he says.

Lesikar’s approach to color photography follows such 20th century American pioneers as Stephen Shore, an acolyte of Andy Warhol known for transforming mundane settings, like gas stations, into indelible works of art. The Shape of Texas also reminds me of the “democratic camera” approach developed by Southern photographer William Eggleston, a contemporary of Shore’s. For his part, Lesikar says he draws on the influences of cinematographers such as Robert Elswit and Roger Deakins, frequent collaborators with, respectively, the Coen brothers and director Paul Thomas Anderson.

An Austin resident, Lesikar was born in Tyler and grew up in Cedar Hill, south of Dallas. He launched The Shape of Texas a few years ago while reflecting on his Czech ancestors who came through Galveston and settled west of Houston in 1853. More intimately, it also stemmed from the “big sense of Texas pride” he feels but cannot quite explain. So he hit the road, and not a moment too soon.

“A lot of these places aren’t going to be looking like this for much longer,” says Lesikar, whose end goal is to publish The Shape of Texas in book form. “I’m sure some of them changed as soon as I photographed them.”

“When I was a kid, my dad worked in downtown Dallas,” Lesikar says. “I remember him lamenting the fact that Dallas was tearing down a lot of things for the sake of progress.” This image captures three eras of the city: the founding of the courthouse, buildings from earlier boom eras, and a modern parking lot.
Trent Lesikar
A historic church and haggard houses sit in the Fourth Ward off Andrew Street, just blocks from downtown Houston. “It feels like a different place,” Lesikar says. “It’s such a stark contrast.”
Trent Lesikar
Sam Houston is a titan of Texas – so much so that he towers over this state’s history, much like his statue in front of these pine trees.
Trent Lesikar
“I like how much the Alamo looms in the Texas consciousness that we make all of these things that look like the Alamo,” Lesikar says. “You could do a whole ’nother project and just photograph places that look like the Alamo, because there are a bajillion places that have its classic facade.”
Trent Lesikar
At one time, the placement of a railroad could improve a town’s fortunes or spell its demise, Lesikar notes. Many towns have “monuments” to the railroad like this restored control tower, a Southern Pacific railcar, and former jail.
Trent Lesikar
This beefy Longhorn bull is named Geronimo. Stuffed and encased on the lawn of the Live Oak County courthouse, he’s been on display since he died in 1927.
Trent Lesikar
Commerce, groceries and religion overlap in the reflections of a storefront window of the Littlepage Furniture Company.
Trent Lesikar
Water towers are often the most visible structures in fading small towns. “This was clearly a thriving place at one time, but now it’s hard to tell what’s open,” Lesikar says. “You can see the modern cars reflected in the window, but they’re ghostly figures.”
Trent Lesikar
“This isn’t Friday Night Lights,” Lesikar says. “It’s in the middle of the day, but it still screams football if you’re familiar with the infrastructure of a small-town football stadium where we meet and commune and rally around.”
Trent Lesikar
“I was just floored by this,” Lesikar says. “Literally, the cowboy is riding off into the sunset. It’s part of the myth of Texas that people came down Route 66 trying to capture that spirit of the West. If you keep going the direction this is heading, you’ll eventually hit Amarillo.”
Trent Lesikar
  • More About:
  • Art