Pieces of the jigsaw

More from British photographer Mark Power (previously) as he continues to indulge his fascination with the US. Following Good Morning America, Volume One we now have Volume Two. [There are going to be five volumes in all.]

“America,” says Power, “enthralls and frustrates me in equal measure.” The photographs in the series are not organized by geography or subject because, “the world is too complicated for that,” explains Power. “I have a keen sense that I’m assembling a large and complicated jigsaw puzzle with little idea of what the final picture will be,” he says.

At his website the photos are grouped by date and by state:

600 Cafe, Miles City, Montana. October 2018 © Mark Power / Magnum Photos

Knoxville, Tennessee December 2015 © Mark Power / Magnum Photos

(Biosphere 2) Oracle, Arizona. March 2017 © Mark Power / Magnum Photos

New Orleans, Louisiana. January 2017 © Mark Power / Magnum Photos

New Orleans, Louisiana. January 2017 © Mark Power / Magnum Photos

Morgan City, Louisiana. January 2017 © Mark Power / Magnum Photos

Perlington, Missouri. January 2017 © Mark Power / Magnum Photos

Faunsdale, Alabama. January 2017 © Mark Power / Magnum Photos

Baton Rouge, Louisiana. January 2017 © Mark Power / Magnum Photos

Birmingham, Alabama. January 2017 © Mark Power / Magnum Photos

Selma, Alabama. January 2017 © Mark Power / Magnum Photos

Waco, Georgia. January 2017 © Mark Power / Magnum Photos

(Drug deal) Atlanta, Georgia. January 2017 © Mark Power / Magnum Photos

Comments

[Michael van der Riet]

To be a see-ree-aas photographer, one must eschew the attractive in favour of the ugly. There's the obligatory scornful laugh at the little people, a few shots that might make the inside pages of the daily news, some documentary and some commercial quality pix, and one that is so hauntingly beautiful that, unlike the others, it can stand alone. Now that everyone carries a camera all day long, more people are discovering that they don't need a specialised profession to take care of their visual records. Quite a high percentage of them take very good pictures, proving that quality photography is not at all a rare skill. In desperation the see-ree-aas photographers are turning to subjects that nobody in their right minds would want to record, marking as their territory the ugly and intrinsically uninteresting.