Still in search of the right structure for my book of travel photographs, I bought a copy of The Open Road – Photography & the American Road Trip by David Campany.
Such work is obviously a far cry from what I have been doing, which if nothing else lacks the inherent coherence of photography arising from a dedicated trip with a defined geographical and temporal framework. But Campany’s introductory essay provides some insights into various approaches.
He talks of working is a series of themes with unifying symbols. Walker Evans’ American Photographs is described as a suggestive sequence that moves thematically, not in a geographical or normative order. Robert Frank has an ‘anti-epic’ and subjective vision. He defines the work of Hopper and Ruscha as breaking with the idea of a exemplary and singular depiction of the scene to express a continuous experience.
And he lays the way open to make of it what one will: ‘Few photographers make narratives in the strict sense, preferring associative or poetic sequences, albums, typologies or just collections of epiphanies.’