art photography in the vernacular

These are all photographs taken by my favorite amateur photographer, my boyfriend Ken. The images were the result of a project he completed while crossing the country in his 1987 Toyota Cressida. His trip started in San Francisco and ended in Chicago, so he stayed close to route 66 the whole way. Considering that the history of photography is one of my main areas of interest, and the category of amateur photography is becoming increasingly more important to the contemporary practice, I find myself extremely drawn to these images. While I spent a good deal of this academic year reading about surrealist manipulations of the medium, I keep coming back to more contemporary investigations. In my mind there is an undeniable link between the modern photographers and the contemporary digital artists like Gursky and Wall. Throughout the century there is a continued interest in the photograph as documentary, no matter how much that notion has been contested in academia. The rise of vernacular photography, as evidenced in the proliferation of exhibitions like the one currently at the art institute "In the Vernacular," still has at its heart these questions of authenticity and the camera's documentary role. I know this to be true because these remarkable images were produced only because Ken wanted to "document" his trip across the country. It was this exact word he used over and over when I asked about his project.

There is no question that these images make a case for the surreality that results from the automatic nature of the photographic medium. These could stand as contemporary examples of exactly this principle that the surrealist photographers were so fond of. Many of the effects I find to be compelling in Ken's images resulted directly from faults in the cameras he was using, and his haphazard photo-taking techniques (sorry Ken, I know how you take pictures).

What is strange is that these photographs can be seen to represent both sides of the debate. On the one hand, they are extremely personal and as previously mentioned, meant for documentary purposes. They are definitely in the vernacular. They also have that "americana" quality that is so typical of contemporary photography practices. The roadside structures, landscapes and strips of highway bring to mind Ed Ruscha and Edward Hopper at the same time. Yet the surreal effects caused by the automatism produces the kind of beauty that belongs to art photography. It is precisely their abstraction and separation from visual truth that makes them beautiful. Ken has stumbled upon an image-making process that addresses both sides of this century-long debate.