A FORWARD.

 

America, the same: Robert Frank's images in his 1958 book, The Americans, ring through my mind as the nation's current truth. The relatable, individualistic, microscopic moments of mundanity--a blanket of cultural change masks just how relevant Frank's study of U.S. life still is. Proud, loud, conditional. We have not learned.

 

Though I came at this as a born-and-raised American, I challenged myself to perceive life here as a visitor. The places I call home became abstracted and fell into patterns of unwelcomeness, eclecticism, and small town comforts. My shutter became louder once I turned my lens on my own people.

 

I used traveling naivety to my advantage--new states and cities, though legible within the American context, became easy subjects. Blending in as a tourist in LA, I aimed to draw out the quiet moments despite the noise around me.

 

"The American" is not a definable character--crushed by the pressures of individualism, one or even many portraits of an American do not speak for the masses. However, Frank's dedication to representing a scenario, an emotion, an experience; it bleeds of unshakeable American principles. Some die for them, many die from them.

 

Let this study be another lesson... learn from it.