If I had to sum up what it means to be an American it would be along the lines of what John Pappas, the owner of the American Café in La Port, Ind. had to say: "Americans are independent minded people who come together for a common purpose."
I chose the following photos from the 400 photos that accompany the 50 reports comprising last year's Small Town America project. The full set would have been too much and I couldn’t decide on one that would say it all.
The links in the captions take you to the story where the photo first appeared which has additional photos and links to additional articles.
Feel free to make your own selection.
Note: Each photo in this selection is 600x400 pixels but has been scaled down with HTML to 545x323 pixels to fit in the Open Salon column.
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Comments
For Small Town America I concentrated on shots of people with something in the background to indicate where they were plus a goodly amount of the ambient general location. I didn't record what they said and only jotted down a few lines.
For the previous project, Red States, Blue Road, I had cut down on the ambient and recorded what people said which also didn't carry the full meaning as it needed more ambient.
If you have a look at Kobe, The First Year After (http://www.actual-life.com/?p=295) which I have recently resurrected, I think you'll agree that this carries the meaning a lot better than what I've been doing as it's a combination of stills and interviews which include background sound, voice tone, facial/body gestures.
This all depends on what is meant by meaning. I was reminded of this reading Stephen Covey's "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" where he talks about empathetic listening where you get inside another person's frame of reference ... you fully, deeply, understand the person, emotionally as well as intellectually.
"Empathetic listening involves more than registering, reflecting, or even understanding the words that are said. Communication experts estimate in fact, that only 10 percent of our communication is represented by the words we say. Another 30 percent is represented by our sounds, and 60 percent by our body language.
I agree ...
For the landscapes what gets published is one of many. For the people, what gets published is one of the moments when they're listening to my part of the conversation; thus they aren't posed, but making eye-contact through the lens to me, and on to you without being aware that their picture is being taken. This isn't my idea, but my application of what I understand is meant by "Equivalence" (see http://www.jnevins.com/whitereading.htm).
In both cases there's a certain feeling the exists when I click the shutter and I just fool around until it arrives. For a long time I thought the moment arrived and I clicked the shutter, but after using a Nikon D300 which can take 6 frames a second, I've come to realize that by the time I decide to click the shutter, it's already been clicked. Curious ...
When I came to the US, in the late eighties of the past century, I heard of some (white) folks trampling on the American flag and saying "America I spit on you". Finding out that there were no reprisals for that "bad behavior" I thought it was a swell country.
Now I do hope that some blacks/ non-whites got away with similar acts too. I personally abhor such displays, but at the same time I too think that being an American means being fiercely independent yet loving America.
(Stunning images, otherwise.)
That project was limited to talking with people in small towns along four major highways (US 95, US 395, Lincoln Highway, US 60). I only met one black who didn't want her picture taken. There were people of all colors in the cities, but I didn't see them in the small towns along those highways.
Conversely, if you look at the people in my previous post, "Hardworking people, raising their families" [http://open.salon.com/blog/dave_mclane/2010/06/05/hardworking_people_raising_their_families], there's only one white, one black, and the rest are in-between Hispanic.
My post are NOT surveys concerning some abstract general case but an attempt to come to a fuller understanding of the land and the people which comprise significant parts of American life but are typically un-represented by main-stream media.
they ALL seemed as if they had sufficient$$'s for a decent lifestyle.
Where are the pics of the AMERICAN street people, etc?
I'm one of those with "things" from a roof to a boat, etc.
That does not mean that I am too "American" as these people are to recognize other Americans who don't have what I have.
You left out a very real and legitimate part of MY America and, it certainly does not help at all to ignore them.
1) Make them bigger, 485px wide fills the Salon column. I think slightly larger, justified text also helps. See http://open.salon.com/blog/bbd
2) Make sure the full range of values that the medium carries are used, meaning somewhere there's a pure black and a pure white. See Ansel Adams Zone System and Lynn Margulis' Professional Photoshop: Fifth Edition is the latest but Fourth is easier and simpler. If you don't have Photoshop, beg borrow and steal to get a copy as otherwise you'll never recreate the feeling you had when you made the shot. Without Photoshop, you're stuck with what the camera saw which isn't how people see as their feelings subconsciously "photoshop".
3) While Photoshop can work wonders on whatever you shoot, it doesn't really help you understand light and how to chose and/or manipulate light so you have a head start on capturing the meaning of what you saw. Tedious and expensive, the best source I know of is the $179 four-CD set, "The Best of Dean Collins on Lighting" from www.software-cinema.com or cheaper, used, from www.amazon.com.
4) While Collins is great for understanding what kind of light creates what kind of feeling, he uses a lot of high-tech, super-expensive equipment that pretty much requires at least one assistant. I opted for Nikon's Creative Lighting System after seeing Joe McNally's "The Speed of Light" CD, and reading his "Hot Shoe Diaries." McNally also uses a lot of high-tech, expensive equipment so I had simplify.
In any case, the main event is NOT the hardware but how to keep aware of what moved you to make the photo in the first place, both while you shoot and while you render in Photoshop. All these photos where shot with one camera, one lens, and whatever fits in a Tamrac Express shoulder bag except for a few which required an over-the-shoulder light stand. This way I don't disturb the ambiance but have enough equipment to capture what I can of the feeling. Since it's digital, I usually take a variety of shots and then chose one I want to gussy up with Photoshop.
Yet despite of all those individual differences I would like to think there is some underarching reason for being American which was put so well by John Pappas, "Americans are independent minded people who come together for a common purpose."
One of those common purposes is to have a single President, and even though some of our Presidents have been assassinated, I would like to believe that most everybody wouldn't like to see this as a usual thing. On the other hand, I would like to believe that everybody cherishes the freedom to independently decide for themselves how they chose to attend to their non-common purposes.
Thus to my way to thinking being an American involves common purposes and non-common purposes, otherwise we would have been flushed down the drain of history a long time ago.
As for methodology, according to Wickipedia, "Methodology may refer to nothing more than a simple set of methods or procedures, or it may refer to the rationale and the philosophical assumptions that underlie a particular study relative to the scientific method."
As a simple set of procedures, I agree, it's too simple, but as a philosophical assumption I think it's still relevant.
Since I have a U.S. Passport I'm legally an American but I'm not quite sure what I am socially as I've spent a fair amount of time traveling and living outside of America. It took some time to enlarge my perspective as I have a hard head, but lessons emerged:
Each country, each city, each place looks better than where you are until you stay there for a couple of weeks.
While people may look radically different when you're outside-looking-in, if you stay with them for a couple of weeks you realize they think their lives are normal and they become normal for you. This is the difference between tourists (new places are excitingly different) and travelers (each place has it's own advantages and disadvantages).
The place for you is whatever you decide is the place for you. This may be for different reasons than other people's reasons so you need to learn how to accomplish your own goals, yet not stand in the way of others accomplishing their goals.
However, I did leave out a bunch on non-Anglos who live in Aguila, Ariz. on the last leg of that journey. which is why I'm doing a project with them (see previous post, http://open.salon.com/blog/dave_mclane/2010/06/05/hardworking_people_raising_their_families ). Aguila (Eagle) has four groups, resident Hispanics, migrant Hispanics, regular Joes, and the rich with their private air-park.
The melon season has started and 18 wheelers from all over the country have come to pick up the melons which the migrants are working all night to pick with the same kind of harvesting machines I saw down in Yuma last year (see http://open.salon.com/blog/dave_mclane/2009/06/02/traveling_through_small_town_usa ).
The local isn't the general, and vice versa.
I do my best to show what I actually saw with my own two eyes. Even so, I could be (unconsciously) selecting to make it partly truth and partly fiction so I make no claims that what I say I saw is the Truth, but only what I saw as there's always some selecting going on.
we're asking for photos that represent what it means to be American. What's interesting is that many people thought it mean the America, but I'm the kind of person who takes things literally.
I chose the five dividers where people were only hinted at (the Obelisk for those that died, a café where people eat, a church which people worship, a path along the Mississippi for walkers and jogges, and fireworks over a house obviously inhabited by people). With more or less with no definite idea, I put three people in each the four sections separated by the dividers.
Further, even though each of the three people is the main subject, I compose them in such a way that the background gives a hint of what their life is like at least at that moment of time. Not my idea, I'm a long time fan of Yousef Karsh who not only did formal portraits, but those which shows people at work. One of my favorites is this: http://torontoist.com/attachments/Karen%20Aagaard/20090218karsh_1.jpg
My dictionary starts out with "to have in mind, intend, purpose, /he means to go/" and it was in this sense that I chose John Pappas' words, "Americans are independent minded people who come together for a common purpose."
I think what it means to be American is various people/places/things with different purposes coming together for a common purpose while at the same time being free to pursue/fulfill independent purposes. I chose those particulars as examples … there are certainly more. And there are certainly people/places/things that are physically in the United States of America which don't fit my definition of American.
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