Thinking About Photography

Looking at the media today, it would be easy to think that we are a country - a world - divided. That beyond our doorway - our bubble - the world is filled with troubling “others.” That the people who live across that divide have nothing in common with us. That humanity no longer shares the same internal language.

In 1962, in his introduction to Travels with Charley: In Search of America, John Steinbeck wrote, “In the fall - right after Labor Day - I’m going to learn about my country. I’ve lost the flavor and taste and sound of it. It’s been years since I’ve seen it…” That’s where I think we are right now. We’ve lost the flavor, the taste, and the sound of what’s outside our bubble - what’s just down the road. We’ve been led to believe there’s a big divide between “us” and “them.”

This showcase is built around the same impulse Steinbeck describes: to step outside the bubble, to look across divides, and to rediscover the threads of connection that still bind us together.

Photography has the ability to connect us to a greater world. Whether it’s the love and pain on the face of a Japanese mother bathing her child, born damaged by chemicals, or the energetic joy in the spontaneous embrace between lovers, photography helps us find connection with a person or place. In that moment, we experience an empathetic awakening—even when what we see are lives very different from ours, or places very far away.

While we might not relate to the autobiographical details of Nan Goldin’s imagery in her landmark work The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, part of what made it so powerful was her unwavering approach to the intensity of relationships. Patti Smith’s A Book of Days  goes beyond her public life, featuring 366 “miniature windows and dispatches” that glimpse past the stage and into her everyday experience. Born Free and Equal is a relatively unknown book by Ansel Adams, the result of a 1943 trip he made to the Manzanar Relocation Center where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during WWII. The book, which caused an uproar, revealed the strength and resilience of these incarcerated Americans.

More recently, we have The Selfie Project by Mei Xian Qiu. On a trip to India, she set up a selfie booth, inviting locals to come and take selfies with her. The project deepened as she turned the tables, asking for a selfie in return. “In that too brief moment of posing together, however mediated by screens or awkwardness, there was the possibility of connection. Many Selfie takers claimed this was a way of reaching a broader world. The connection was fragile, fleeting, but real. A spontaneous community formed in the shared act of seeing and being seen.”

With this showcase, I invite you to connect with others and experience the lives they are living. Some will be like mirrors, while others will be windows across the divide. The photographers in this showcase have connected to the world in deep and meaningful ways. In several projects, we see how young people have responded to the worlds they find themselves in, while others examine how culture is reflected in the food we eat and in the towns and landscapes we inhabit. From PhotoBook Journal we include a series of book reviews that span both globe and time, weaving together how we live with memory, the past, and the future.