American Photographs: August 2008

I met Reuben as I was walking past his used car lot on the outskirts of Boise. I heard two men screaming and went to see what was going on. Reuben was standing next to a car and a man and his son were walking away from him shouting. After they left I asked Reuben what it had been about and he said, "Oh, people come in here all the time trying to screw me so why shouldn't I try to screw them?" Mind you, this was at a time that in a national poll a majority of Americans said they would trust a used car salesman more than they would trust the President who, some of you might remember, was President Nixon, or, at least he was when I took this picture. Nixon resigned exactly four days later. Reuben invited me to his home for the night and he and his wife were gracious hosts.

About the Blog

In 1973-1974 I walked across the country, from Maine to Oregon via West Virginia, and took these photographs of the people I met. As a photojournalist I wanted to create an intimate portrait of America that would coincide with the Bicentennial. I processed all the photographs over a two year period to put into a book. For several reasons, mostly financial, the book was not published and I put everything away in storage. Then, in 2006, some 30 years later, I took out the 500 contact sheets I had from the 35 mm film I shot on the walk and digitized them. Magnifying the contact sheets on my computer I began looking at each of the photographs all over again. Needless to say, I found things in them that I wasn't aware of even when I took them. I took this new vision with me into the dark room where I worked for most of 2006 printing hundreds of finished prints from the original negatives on high quality silver paper. I scanned and digitized 500 of those photos. In the final step I printed the photos right from Photoshop on an Epson R2400 printer using archival inks. What I see looking at the photos a second time around and more than thirty years later is the people and their wonderful openness, their ease, how they allowed themselves to be curious, vulnerable, and present with me. I doubt I would get the same response today if I did the whole trip over again. Of course, the openness, the ease, the curiosity was reciprocal! I was comfortable with everyone I met without exception. I admired them. They were wonderful! All of them! They were amazing! You can see it in the photos. They were warm, generous, lovely and brilliant. Their photographs really deserve to be seen.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

About the Blog

About Me

Under Construction

Copywrites

Blog Archive