Past Time
“Past Time” explores the political and cultural embrace of an idealized America that never existed for many. Inspired by the toxic nostalgia ingrained in our current political divisions, it contrasts popular imagery of our past with photographs of contemporary life taken in locations that helped form the notion of the “good old days.”
I photographed communities that helped inspire the mythical “normalcy” of the white middle-class nuclear family in picturesque post-WWII America towns: Stockbridge, MA (Norman Rockwell’s paintings of small town life), Mount Airy, NC(Andy Griffith’s televised morality tales in the fictional town of Mayberry), Seneca Falls, NY (Frank Capra’s film of a town rallying around its tortured banker hero), Marceline, MO (Walt Disney’s replication of his small-town Missouri main street in theme parks), Dixon, IL (home of actor and President Ronald Reagan), Placerville and Vallejo, CA (hometown and planned community associated with “Painter of Light” Thomas Kinkade) and others.
My photographs of contemporary life in these towns are incorporated with film and TV stills, and illustrations from children’s books of the 1950s and 60s. Together, they explore how exclusionary misrepresentations of a past-perfect white America align with the current reality of some iconic American towns.
