POWER, Mark - Good Morning, America 1

Background information, personal statement by photographer Mark POWER

"For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to explore America, an ambition fuelled by the legion of TV shows that crossed the Atlantic in the 1960s. As a young and impressionable child, I devoured 'The Man from Uncle' and 'The Fugitive', but it was the westerns, evoking a landscape utterly removed from the congested English suburbs surrounding me, that I loved most: 'Bonanza', 'The High Chaparral', 'The Virginian' and, in particular, 'Casey Jones'. I began a search for the America which lived in my imagination, the one generated during childhood, the one that had probably never existed at all.”

Content

"Over the past six years photographer Mark POWER has travelled to and from across the US to create a complex visual narrative of a country attempting to redefine itself. This publication, 'Good Morning, America (Volume One)' is the first in a series of five books by Mark POWER to be produced over the next five years as a result of this ongoing project. It represents a personal and timely exploration of both the American cultural and physical landscape, and the divergence of reality and myth."
"Ranging across a grand sweep of American time and space, Mark POWER’s work recognises diverse environments and experiences. But most emphatically it is the portrait of a post-industrial culture still in the throes of convulsive change; a society where the signs of extreme inequality and degradation are now so commonplace that all across the country America seems not only falling into ruin, but falling back in time. Many of Mark POWER’s photographs are heavy with this sense of a history in reverse, and with a sadness that is deeply felt. For although his project bears all the hallmarks of a classic documentary survey, a series of detached observations that accumulate detail and weigh up evidence, Mark POWER is also seeing America through the filter of an imposing cultural legacy that helped define him." (© David Chandler)

About British Magnum photographer, Mark POWER (b.1959)

Photo books by and with works by Mark POWER