This Week in Photography: Make America Great Again?

 

 

 

I’m keeping it short today.

(For real this time.)

 

 

 

I’m currently on my 4th coffee, at 11am, because I didn’t sleep well.

My daughter climbed into our bed, in the middle of the night, as she’d had a bad dream.

Right now, she’s sprawled on the rug, just outside my bedroom door, lounging in her pink, Hello Kitty pajamas.

(It’s a snow day. Again.)

It’s disorienting, as if I’ve traveled back to March 2020, when all of us were on top of each other, 24/7.

Remember that time when you didn’t go anywhere for a year?

(I sure do.)

 

 

 

 

If it weren’t for the pandemic, having the kids home today, happy, while snow glimmers on the ground outside, would be the best thing ever.

Who doesn’t feel nostalgia for snow days?

Staying home from school.

Sledding.

Drinking hot chocolate.

Watching bad re-runs on TV.

(The Brady Bunch, The Munsters, ChiPs, Leave it to Beaver, The Addams family, The Andy Griffith show… man, did they some have cheesy programs, back in the day.)

 

 

But just as 9/11 was the seminal event for Generation X, cleaving reality into the before and after times, the last two years have been exactly that, for much of the world.

A turning point, where everything seems to have changed, and both new and old rules apply.

Look no further than today’s news to know it’s true: Russia just invaded Ukraine, with a goal of occupying and then assimilating a separate country, the first step in re-building the Soviet Empire, under Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

Everyone keeps writing it’s the biggest European invasion since WWII, so the expectation of national sovereignty, which was taken for granted for decades, is no longer realistic.

 

 

Yet conservative Americans, the ones who drove the Red Scare under Joe McCarthy, are now actively siding with Russia, against their own country, because Vlad represents the AlphaChristianWhiteMale, and they all want to be like him.

He’s physically tough, personally ruthless, fabulously rich, answers to no one, hates everyone who’s different, and takes what he wants, when he wants to.

That’s as old school as it gets, and when half of America prefers the dictator model to a democratic republic, we are in deep shit.

(Sorry, guess a lack of sleep has damaged my optimism today.)

 

 

 

 

Or, more likely, it’s that I just looked at a depressing, almost nihilistic photo book. (Though I doubt the artist sees his own work that way.)

“Past Time,” by Paul Shambroom, was published in 2020, by Fall Line Press in Atlanta, and showed up in the mail a year ago.

While it would have made for good viewing then, (with Trump barely out of office,) the fact it marinated on my book pile for a year is beneficial to us all.

Because boy, does it feel relevant today.

 

 

 

 

To be honest, I didn’t “like” the book very much.

It’s well-made, with a strong concept, but wasn’t created to engender happy feelings.

(No sir.)

The book is built around a project in which Paul Shambroom photographed in small towns across America, as metaphors for nostalgia towards our country’s white-bread, MAGA past.

While everyone was talking about what the Trumpers wanted to return to, (a world where they could say and do as they pleased, without worrying about anyone’s feelings; where people of color were a permanent underclass,) Paul went out and documented what those places were actually like.

Make America Great Again?

What was so great, according to the Putin-loving-hordes?

Well, we see a lot of hometowns.

Ronald Reagan.
Andy Griffith.
Walt Disney.
Mark Twain.
Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Norman Rockwell.
Thomas Kinkade.

(It reads like a list of idealized Americans, if your version of ideal is White, Christian and Dead.)

Interspersed with the photographs are historical images, jigsaw puzzles, and even a racist coloring book.

Surprisingly, though Paul Shambroom is a very talented artist, whose work is in the biggest collections, (like MoMA,) and showed in the Whitney Biennial, the image quality here is intentionally scattershot.

Bad light throughout, a lack of high-resolution-sharpness, and a heap of lazy crops.

But with an artist of this caliber, we can’t assume the crops are lazy, but rather the images are designed to be off-putting.

Gursky proved you can take bleak light and make a masterpiece, but I think the anti-aesthetic here is being used on purpose, as a way of showing how low America has sunk.

 

 

How sad are its quaint little towns, the places people wish were still like Mayberry, or Pleasantville?

 

 

There is a well-written essay at the end, by Tim Davis, and an in-depth interview between Paul Shambroom and publisher Bill Boling, and both texts suggest this book is more positive than I gathered.

There is talk of all Americans having the desire for safety, and housing for their children in common, and they mention the book by that dude everyone always references, which states people are safer and better off now than at any point in human history.

I get it.

But looking at this book, I came away feeling like the nostalgia bubble was being popped, because things were crap back then, and they’re still crap.

Not hard to feel that way, after the last two pandemic years, but these images predate that.

They’re more a reaction to pure MAGA, and given how much Trump is cheering on this new wave of territorial aggression, I guess maybe the book has a point.

(I mean, it opens with an image from “Leave it to Beaver,” so it’s not subtle.)

I wanted to review “Past Time” today because not only is it well-built; it has a strong point of view.

It’s an excellent book, even if I don’t “like” it.

It’s bleak, sure, but certainly fits with the 2020’s vibe.

Anyway, sending all the good energy to the folks of Ukraine!

See you next week.

 

To purchase “Past Time” click here

 

 

If you’d like to submit a book for potential review, please email me at jonathanblaustein@gmail.com. We are particularly interested in books by artists of color, and female photographers, so we may maintain a balanced program. And please be advised, we currently have a significant backlog of books for review.