Photographers, Writers, and the American Scene: Visions of Passage. (Media).

James Enyeart, ed.

Santa Fe, NM: Arena Editions, 2002

On October 19. 1998, President Clinton signed into law the Year 2000 Information and Readiness Disclosure Act, to encourage the dissemination or information about computer processing problems associated with the transition to the year 2000. With the unleashing of this information came a fifteen-month, Y2K media frenzy that gripped public consciousness with the drama of hypothetical (and grisly) outcomes. So fixated was the nation upon the possible failure of banks, power plants, elevators, home appliances and 910 dispatches that insufficient attention was paid to where we stood culturally at this historical moment. Expectations of disaster mounted and ultimately eclipsed cultural reflection.

Mindful of the importance and need for societal examination, the National Millennium Survey, under the aegis of James Enyeart, commissioned 35 photographers and 15 writers to investigate and respond to the cultural status of America. Nationally renowned visual artists and creative writers (many of whom are Guggenheim Fellows, MacArthur Fellows and Pulitzer Prize winners) produced photographs, poems and short stories between 1995 and 2000 that are compiled in a beautifully printed book titled Photographers, Writers, and the American Scene: Visions of Passage.

This project was conceived of as a compilation of individualistic and unique visions as well as voices with no collaboration among the participants. Because the photographs appear within the first two thirds of the book and the writings fill-the last third, any desire to read the images as illustrations of the texts and vice versa is alleviated (a departure from its predecessors The Family of Man by Edward Steichen and John Steinbeck's America and Americans). Instead, the book's choreographed rhythm adroitly moves the reader from Enyeart's smart essay, through images then poems, creating a powerful collection that "samplel[s] the American Scene in all its diversity."

The poignancy of this project lies in the spirit of these images and words, which differs greatly from the depressed and xenophobic cultural climate we find ourselves in presently. Upon these pages, the evidence of a peaceful and colorful diversity, surely at the persistent core of any American Dream, is tangible, and it may be found as much in what the artists are not addressing as what they are. People in various scenes of daily activity dance across the pages, from Tina Barney's well-dressed children to Paul D'Amato's nude sunbathers at the L-Street Bath House in South Boston, and the shoppers, cell-phone-talkers and diners of Susan Meiselas. Shadowy self-portraits by Lee Friedlander, a dramatic examination of identity by Carrie Mae Weems, and a vividly written childhood recollection about how his father was managing his mother's alcoholism by Robert Hass, all position the artist at the heart of the storytelling. Among the most beautiful images in the collection is William Christenberry's roadside gourd st and, which is quiet and eerily melancholic.

The documentary tradition tethers the images together. At a time when conceptual image making dominates the medium, and the art world has Just realized (and now feasts upon indiscriminately) the artistic Implications of the photographic, it is thrilling to see a project based on photography's most basic strength--the ability to render with insight, wit and passion the world around us.

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