America!

In the 1955, Robert Frank, a native of Switzerland, was awarded the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation grant to travel across the United States and photograph his experience. What he saw was a nation experiencing growing pains; a nation in the throes of a battle between modernity and tradition. His vision was raw, honest and clear, and for many, unnerving. Frank’s outsider perspective allowed him to view the ordinary with a keen and discerning eye which many times uncovered a side of American life that people had chosen to ignore. "I speak of the things that are there, anywhere and everywhere-- easily found, not easily selected and interpreted. A small catalog comes to the mind's eye: a town at night, a parking lot, a supermarket, a highway, the man who owns three cars and the man who owns none, the farmer and his children, a new house and a warped clapboard house, the dictation of taste, the dream of grandeur, advertising, neon lights, the faces of the leaders and the faces of the followers, gas tank and postoffices and backyards..." (from Frank's Guggenheim application.)

28,000 frames and four years later Frank released a book entitled The Americans, which stands today as one of the most powerful and unequivocally raw documentations of the nation during that time. A sense of history imbue those photographs as if he were contemplating the present as it might be seen at some future date. As John Szarkowski said, “The image survives the subject and becomes the remembered reality.” Frank’s photographs achieved this.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of Robert Frank's The Americans I am starting a new section on this blog. It will be an ongoing project entitled, America! intended to follow in the steps of Robert Frank by taking a critical look at the "social landscape" of America- the people, places, habits, problems, passions and quirks of this country.

Over the next year I will post one black and white photo per day (or 7 per week at any rate). The photo doesn't have to be taken on the date posted but it does have to be taken in 2009. Of course, I haven't won the Guggenheim so my travels may be limited. I will try to post the location of each shot taken. Who knows, maybe in a year I'll have to change the name of the project to Houston! We shall see.

I hope that through this project a unique vision of my generation and my country will emerge. I hope through this project to create for myself an atmosphere of constant editing and criticism. I hope to create for you photos that stand on the tradition of the medium, photos that do not forget the plastic or the mechanics or the eye.

[Update March 15, 2010: I have decided to include color photographs as well as black and white]