Introducing America To The Americans

I am particularly interested in the photograph, the roll of the photograph in American society, and it's nature of representation. So when I considered how a photograph may be incorporated into a work of public art, I immediately thought of the photograph as a sort of mirror in which we as Americans may peer intimately into our own society.

This has been done before, though under much more dire situations. During the 1930s the U.S. Government began the Farm Security Administration as an effort to combat rural American poverty. They hired 15 renowned photographers to travel the midwest photographing the American families living within the notorious "dustbowl." What they produced was an intimate and sometimes harsh window into the lives of the average American farmer in the 1930s. These images changed the public's outlook on the topic and helped rally support for the government New Deal. Most importantly the work is a snap shot of what is was to be an American. I believe that the concept of being an American has changed drastically since then. Situations for some have become just as dire, and for others the American dream has become a desert mirage.

What I would like to accomplish would be a modern rendition of the F.S.A.'s photo work in the 1930s. I would like to produce a window into TRUE American life and culture in our modern day and age. When the F.S.A. hired their photographers they didn't have digital cameras and computers. In our generation of America, nearly every man, woman, and child knows how to generally work a camera. So what I've done is taken the communal "Netflix" business model and applied it to documentary photography. From a central location I would mail a film camera to an American household. This would be a special 35mm film camera that has had it's wind feature disabled. They would basically have ONE shot and ONE question to answer, with that single photo they may shoot anything they please, as long as it answers a single important question:

"WHAT IS YOUR AMERICAN DREAM?

Once they are done, everything will be neatly prepared for them to mail it back to the central location, where I will personally wind the camera to the next shot and send it off to the next family. This would have to be something people sign up for ahead of time so that like minded and interested people are participating and expecting to receive the camera. Just like Austin's "Car2Go" service or "Netflix" everything should be intuitive ready to go with the least amount of work for the user as possible. Essentially they open the box, snap a photo, and mail it off.


Hopefully in the end, there should be a great community portrait of what it means to be an American in a modern 2011 society. The final work should be presented in a gallery format, preferably in a government public space. The American people will be able to view a collection images produced by the people themselves. The images will not be dictated by major media corporations nor any sort of financial interests. It will simply be a visual representation of the current state of our nation.

Gabriel Sanchez