Soul thieves

What I'd call 'the American traveler photographer mystic' is a strain of photography particularly infectious (to me) and seems to have become a process, originating in Evans, where the face of America is redefined each time someone photographs it in a new way.

'Ordinary' America, in this tradition, appears, largely, to be the subject matter, whether by direct portrait, mundane streets or odd suburban paraphernalia. Ironically the audience, generally speaking could not be further from this apparent 'common' world, yet it is amongst this audience and through its media where the identity of America is actually defined and reflected visually.

Photo by Stephen Shore, from Uncommon Places - Houk Gallery

If they (our folk outside the photographic sphere) get to see these works at all, would they not be looking at themselves and their pictured environment with perplexity rather than recognition? I suspect, too, that they would be too busy living their ordinariness to waste time on a photograph. Perhaps they won't even be aware, 20 years from the shutter's moment of truth, that via a gradual cultural osmosis, photography will have given them a new face and called it America.

Because cultures don't really model themselves on the photographic image; they develop instead along their own lines of traditions and norms, we may find the public visual map of America, widely differing from its actuality and that the pictorial definition is far more about the photographer (and his following) than the subject and their identity, however noble or ideal the pursuit.

Was America ever like Stephen Shore's vision, if so is it still that way? For those of us that aren't in that world we may really think it is, if we don't carefully notice that the dates say 1973-1979, or when at some point we are shown a differing image by a new generation of photographers.

We've tired long ago of the oft repeated 'superstitious' fear claiming that the camera steals one's soul. Perhaps though, it's really true, well in so far as it substitutes it with a select fake?

Submitted by Philip Cartland on 15 October 2007 - 5:06pm.