SketchBook UpLoad

Image from PS1′s & the Center for Afrofuturist Studies’ website

I wish I could write an essay about everything that Public Space One means to me. It’s a place where I hold many fond memories watching performances, participating in workshops, and viewing galleries. I’ve tired becoming an active member (one summer I helped paint the walls of the Press Co-op) but alas being a student has been more or less of a demanding lifestyle.

Nevertheless, I love the space despite my inabilities to currently contribute to it. The people heading it are so determined to put ART out there, and host artists, and their dedication to other fellow artists has helped make Iowa City a little more accessible to those looking for an art center.

Image from Doug Rickard’s website.

I stumbled upon Doug Rickard’s project A New American Picture after looking through Pier 24′s videos. As a person who loves photos of other people and scenes of their daily lives, I was struck by the simplicity (yet complexity) of Rickard’s project.

After listening to an audio clip of Rickard talking about his project, (listen to it here) I learned that all the pictures were simply from Google Earth Streetmap photos. Having taken some “tours” around the world through streetmap myself, I thought the idea of framing particular moments caught by Google Earth was intriguing.

Rickard looked to neighborhoods in America that have been neglected, those that provoked definitions of the United States that often times Americans themselves do not use to describe their home country. The idea that America is doing fine is negated when observing these photos. The images portray loneliness, poverty, and sometimes danger.

For having been taken by a car driving down the road, no person was keeping in mind composition or content. Yet composition and content come through, simply because it was just caught. A story is told, without having any intention of being told.

There is the issue regarding the personal lives of those being documented by the images. Their lives, not particularly glamorous, are exhibited front and center through Rickard’s project. Yet Rickard defends his collection of these photographs—street photography, he claims, will always be intertwined with the intricacies of what it reveals. He rather likes the discussion that comes forward because of such photographs.