Good Morning America: Street Photographer Michael Ray Nott Offers A Powerful Visual Insight Into Contemporary USA
History, some say, is the mirror of the moment. Maybe we could also say that street photography is an equally important visual mirror of a particular historical era, or socio-economic and/or geographical reality? The two, for me, are not mutually exclusive.
For street photographer Michael Ray Nott it is the most natural of things to do. Hold the camera up to the eye and shoot the reflections of that existential mirror out on the streets of Nashville, Tennessee.
Captured over four years in Nott’s adopted hometown – he moved south from the snows of Wyoming – and deposited into a wonderful new book: ‘Good Morning America How Are Ya! Nott’s street work is candid, edgy and a succinct and fascinating reflection of USA circa now (ish).
It is a book that reinforces Nott’s own belief: We are all on camera all the time – street photography’s version, I suppose, of The Trueman Show (where the remarkable Jim Carey discovers that his life is a wall to wall 24/7 reality television product). In case you didn’t know if you take to the streets…well…
There is, what I would describe as, a powerful socio-politico-religious and psychological thread to this street photography collection. A post-modern, late capitalism window on an increasingly restless society, tied together and symbolised in black and white as well as art and text. As if we are being thrown messages from an an altered world somewhere beyond our own existence.
In Good Morning America Nott provides a series of intriguing visual representations of a time and a place. Photographs which prove compelling, exciting, and historically planted in contemporary America. A posturing, often protesting US of A in all its wonderful glory and rabid eccentricities.
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
It is a book filled with many visual gems, and in one essential sense Nott combines the power of the visual with the impact of the literary. ‘Southern Strong’, ‘Stop The Hate, Trump is Making America Great’, ‘Enough’ all scream out at his audience in a real and authentic fashion. For me, Nott is more ‘real’ and much more ‘authentic’ than art and text maestros Barbara Kruger and Gillian Wearing (both favourites of mine).
His, is a living, breathing candid chronicle of the streets as it happens, when it happens and where it happens.
Every Michael Ray Nott photograph in this book offers a highly charged visual and (often) textual representation of today’s America. A layered effect that produces messages emerging from a variety of signifiers, hand made placards, clothing and facial expressions.
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
From a couple dressed in militaristic apparel, the man in his near sinister pose de guerrero, complete with bandana covering the lower half of his face and the good old American flag sprouting from his head, to a young child with, what looks like, a military issue M16 training rifle. There is the man with the Jesus tie to the man holding the sign that says ‘Stop The Hate, Trump Is Making America Great’. All these images speaking to us of American modernity in all its divisive symbolism: social, religious and political.
It is a sweeping portrait of a time with references to President Trump and the questioning of capitalism. A ‘Homeresque’ character ( I thought an aged Homer Simpson resplendent with beard? Whining on about the bullying of capitalism and blaming a system – we all have a hand in creating – for all the ills of the universe, and, maybe even beyond?).
The derelict beauty of a beat up automobile carrying the US flag could be read as a subliminal image of a dented, polarised America in an age of divisions. The run down car mirroring a decaying industrial spirit, while the flag representative of the emergence of a national populism that looks for someone or some group to blame for all the country’s ills – as it glances backward to some long, lost mythical era.
The haunted, defiant look on the faces of the pro-Trumpers to the snarling demeanour of those who want nothing to do with the US President spelled out on t-shirts.
In truth this book has everything. Symbols of nationalism and exclusivity while it speaks to us of the street in modern America as a potential battleground of different opinions all coalescing around there own private badges of what it is to be American in these, often confusing times.
These photographs in their own way make me feel like Michael Ray Nott is holding up a mirror to the socio-economic and political now of Nashville which, in many ways, filters out to what is happening around the fifty states.
This is a book of the visual now and America in the throes of a first term Trump administration.
Photographs of Jesus ties, holy bible holders, Trump lovers, Trump haters…I am never sure if Michael Ray Nott is a street photographer, or maybe even a documentary photographer or photojournalist. But, none of that matters when he can produce a great work of art like Good Morning America How Are Ya!
Michaels New Book in UK can be purchased from AMAZON UK
And in AMAZON USA
To see more of Michale, Visit his Website
Comment
Frankly, I see nothing interesting or unique at all in these very poorly exposed photographs. The whole thing makes me wonder about why we (the art world) give any exposure to badly executed art. Surely this just encourages more bad art.