Photo:Ben Speck
Americanomic State Ben Speck, Paul Osman, Leon Diape , Bryan Dooley,Sean Kurtis
Exhibition runs July 10 – July 31 2009
A group photographic exhibition by 5 UK based documentary photographers. On July 9 2009, theprintspace gallery in Shoreditch will launch Americanomic State, lasting three weeks. Over the space of two floors, viewers will be invited to discover a unique vision of 5 UK based documentary photographers, interpreting the contexts of identity and economy.
Ben Speck. Riding The Rails, 2008
Born in the Great Depression, the Hobos were the largest American mobile workforce that ever existed. Illegally riding freight trains to move around, they started what is an American subculture until today. There is a whole new generation of young hobos in the US. They have many different reasons for living this lifestyle, but for the majority it is a conscious choice made from ideology rather than necessity. Many of them are homeless by choice, because they don’t want to have any ties. No ties means absolute freedom. Theirs, they feel, is an alternative and better way of life, independent of a society they consider petty and misleading. Others are simply following the beatnik spirit of experiencing life to the full while searching for it.
Paul Osman. Reno, 2008
The Biggest Little City in the World grew out of the early twentieth century gold mining boom in nearby Virginia city, as a last location stop before the California trail. Legalized and therefore taxed gambling in casinos was first introduced in the state of Nevada in 1931, as a device (ironically) to reintroduce cash flow back into the economy, to counteract the Great Depression. Over the next few decades Reno established itself as the leisure vacation capital of the United States, until it gave way to the mob’s financial input into the glass and concrete of Las Vegas. As we find ourselves in the greatest depression since the Wall Street Crash, the world seems a pretty desolate place, where aspirations seem fragile. With people spending less on leisure activities, and hedging their bets, Reno is a microcosm of the United States and the world’s financial situation. This series of images is a comment on the death of an economy and what remains in the way of hope.
Leon Diaper. The Last Free Place, 2008
October 1942, a tiny township in the Colorado Desert, Camp Dunlap is erected. The newest West Coast Marine Core training Centre. Sitting at the western foot of the Chocolate Mountains, the training centre would boast thirty buildings, including a water treatment and distribution system, eight miles of paved streets, a 76’ x 165’ swimming pool and concrete fuel tanks. March 1946, just four fickle years later and Tent City, as it was briefly known is abolished then demolished, only the concrete slab flooring is left intact. And the swimming pool. Slab City, the last free place, indisputably has it’s own texture, a dusty antique boutique filled to the rafters with kindness and experience, wisdom and generousity. A panoramic horizon of Chocolate Mountains and orchestral bombings, silent ambitions and grand motivations.
Residents in the Slabs know something. They are surprised you do not. They have their eye’s wide open, they have duelled with society and constraint and have neither slain nor been slain. Simply preferring instead to lay their rapier down and concentrate on a more worthier opponent.
Seba Kurtis. 700 miles (The changing face of America) 2008
“I was living as an illegal immigrant in Europe for more than 5 years, so this body of work is based on an understanding of being a man with no rights.” Borders are imaginary lines that require specific documentation to pass through and to stay on the other side. Certain individuals set these boundries and rules that determine who is entitled to cross over these discriminatory lines and stay and who is not. For those concerned the imaginary concept becomes real and interferes with lives.
Bryan Dooley. Omaha, Neb to Sacramento, Cal, 2009
The ‘American Dream‘ has continuously required an advancing Frontier, allowing the ‘Dream‘ to be continuously reinvented causing an ever desirable idyll, a utopia to aspire to. The Transcontinental Railroad is said to have allowed the idyll of America as a ‘land of plenty’ to exist. The Dream as a Frontier was reduced further on the railroads 75th anniversary by the introduction of a commemorative stamp, which was issued across America in 1944, emphasising the continuing reduction of the Dream’s representation by the railroad and also how homogenised the American Dream has become. Omaha, Neb to Sacramento, Cal focuses on these once frontier lands along the route of the Transcontinental railroad, where the American Dream was once at it’s most pure and the inhabitants of these lands have now been left clinging to fragments of the Dream as the Frontier has moved on.
www.theprintspace.co.uk Ben Speck: www.benspeck.com
Paul Osman thejackofhearts@hotmail.co.uk Leon Diaper: www.leondiaperphotography.com
Bryan Dooley: www.bryandooley.com
