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Who We Were: A Snapshot History Of America By Michael Williams, Richard Cahan, and Nicholas Osborn |
Square America
A gallery of vintage snapshots & vernacular photography
!!!After two years of work and over twelve years of collecting snapshots, it's finally here- Who We Were: A Snapshot history of America!- A collaboration between myself, Michael Williams, and Richard Cahan. 350 photos, all taken by amateur photographers, tell the story of America from the 1890s through the early 1970s, literally beginning inside a surry with a fringe on top and ending on the Moon. Of course there's World Wars (two of them!), the Depression, and Civil Rights marches but there's also cave-dwelling child brides and love-lorn bootleggers, rabbit hunters and rat-catching contests. Click here for more details! Last Chance! Really! Order before October 15th and receive a free 60 minute DVD-R of clips from my home movie collection- click here to see the full line-up and view a few clips! We're also now taking orders to Europe, the U.K., and (finally) Canada. The books have arrived and are truly beautiful so order now!
Squareamerica is now on Facebook (with Twitter soon to follow) so until I get an RSS feed (which is probably a couple of months off) you can get site updates there- I should note that I'll be adding a new show every week / 10 days for the next couple of months so sign up now if you don't want to miss anything.
Current Exhibitions
New!! Added 10/07 Double Takes- 80 of my best double exposures. All that is solid melts into air as Dali-esque dopplegangers cavort with ghostly ghosts. It's a Freudian field day as the camera reveals lantent desires and dreams made flesh. Simple accidents or vertiginous glimpses of a deeper reality?? You decide!
New!! Added 10/7 A Letter from the Vanishing World (The Readers)- As print languishes in its death throes here's a message in a bottle to our soon to be be-Kindled kinder: there were once things called books and newspapers and people read them. Consider these 30 photos, as immaterial as they may be, as evidence.
New!! Added 9/18 Everything You Already Knew About Sex (But Kind Of Wish You Didn't)- A set of five separate NSFW shows from the margins of the sexual world. Expect an amazingly strange and sad report back from the front lines of fetishism, an incredibly persistent (and very narrowly focused) cross-dresser, and just about the happiest topless middle-aged woman you've ever seen! Not for the faint of heart so avert your eyes if you must. But remember, it's just like Lady Olga told Joseph Mitchell, "If the truth was known, we're all freaks together."
Moving Pictures: Brief Lives and Living Portraits- 20 animated series of photobooth strips and/or multiple photobooth images of the same person. A jittery, flickering, Frankensteinian attempt to bring old photos back to life. A couple of the series- the first and last- have over 30 images so they'll take a little time to load but they're worth the wait!
The Eternal Sunshine of Fred & Anne- Assorted excerpts from a series of albums I picked recently of a 1910s-20s Iowa couple in which all evidence of former loves has been imperfectly, and often violently, erased.
It's 1975 And This Man Is About To Show You The Future- 56 images from a pre-powerpoint IBM slide presention with one foot in the future and the other stuck solidly in the 70s.
On The Beauty of Absence- A Small show of accidental abstractions: 13 pages from an album I recently picked up in which almost all of the photos had either fallen out or been removed.
On The Limits Of Memory- About 70 (45 new to the site) optically distorted photos. Dreamy and strange, they are the product of cheap cameras and damaged negatives- no photoshop necessary.
Smoke- Short & sweet: 50 photos of smokers & their cigarettes
Spring Cleaning- Over the past week I've added over 20 new photos to Defaced, my show of photos of people whose faces have been ripped, cut out, or otherwise obscured. I also added between 30-40 photos to both Guns! Guns! Guns! and The Book of Sleep as well as condensing both down from 10 pages to 2 and 3 respectively. Go take a look now!!
What Was On (In Space) - Space Exploration of the 60s & Early 70s the way most people experienced it: on grainy black & white TV sets. 50 photographs of the television coverage of some of the Gemini and Apollo missions, a few of them as other-worldly as space travel itself.
African-American Portraits & Snapshots- No clever title just, in honor of Black history month, a roughly chronological selection of over 150 of the best African-American themed photos from my collection. As a special bonus I've included four clips from my home movie collection as well!
On Beauty (And Its Discontents) - Almost 85 photos on the idea of feminine beauty. Expect pin-up girls and beauty queens, mirrors, make-up and more!
What Was On (November 1963)- In November of 1963 Martin Johnson took over 140 photos of CBS's coverage of JFK's funeral. I've edited them down to a small selection of 33 photos documenting both the assassination and funeral itself.
Dance Lessons- 50 photos taken at a Chicago-area Arthur Murray Dance Studio from 1958-1962. A beguiling mixture of awkwardness and grace.
What Was On (1957)- 48 Photos of women on TV taken late at night by a lonely photographer in 1957. Encrusted with 50 year old dust and emulsion the photos of women from melodramas and late-night talk shows are not only a record of one person's peculiar obsession but also a virtual catalog of the kind of roles women played in the popular entertainment of the era.
The Party- Almost 50 photos from one late 60s/early 70s biracial, bisexual, bacchanal. WARNING: this one's probably NSFW.
Civil Servants- A small show of 16 portraits of policemen, fire chiefs, and meter maids from Nazareth, PA. 1975
Encounters With The Other (Adventures In Amateur Ethnography)- A selection of over 50 photos from the late 19th Century through the 1950s taken (for the most part) by American tourists and soldiers of "the natives" while on foriegn soil from Mexico and the Caribbean to the exotic, inscrutable East. WARNING- there are a couple of photos that might be considered NSFW.
The Square America 2nd Anniversary Spectacular!!- To celebrate 2 years online I've added 8 (Yes 8!) new shows for your viewing pleasure:
Recent Acquisitions- 40 of the best photos I've gotten in the last few months, all new to Square America!
The Bottom Half- Faces are totally overrated so here are 32 photos of legs, feet, and behinds- A little something for the fetishist in all of us.
The Menagerie- 69 photos of our animal friends, some living, some not. Expect dogs, cats, elephants, birds, and a whole bunch of blurry monkeys.
Catch of the Day- 34 photos of fisherman (and women) proudly displaying their catches (it's cooler than it sounds-honest!!)
What Was Next- 31 photos documenting the oblique narratives created by negative strips and composite prints.
And finally Some Places- Three shows (and soon to be more) investigating some of the many places that people like to have their photos taken.
Down By The Tracks- 38 photos celebrating the romance of the rails, the promise of escape, those leaving and those left behind.
At The Window- 33 photos looking out and looking in.
On The Street- 37 photos taken by the professional photographers who staked out the streets of major cities and tourist spots and took candid snapshots which they would then attempt to sell to their subjects, promising them "Natural pictures of you in motion." For the most part hastily shot and incredibly poorly printed these photos are neverthess are invaluable record of streetlife from the 30s through the 50s.
Family Dynamics- 50 photos- some old, some new. Simply put, the biggest, boldest, best-est family photos Square America has to offer.
Some Introductory Remarks on the History of Summer- A roughly chronological survey of over 375 photos from the first sixty-nine summers of the 20th century featuring bathing beauties and brawny beefcake, sun, surf, and sand.
Slideshow- Not one, not two, but four (!) shows of from my collection of scintillating slides. First there's Lighting Out for the Territory: The Road Trip Photography of Martin C. Johnson- a love song in kodachrome to the golden age of the road trip. Johnson crisscrossed the country throughout the 60s and photographed every bit of it- expect motels, diners, and beauty of the passing landscape from driver's seat. Next up we have The Faces- a group of 40+ photos of a group of young women (and one young man) undergoing some mysterious kind of medical testing. Your guess is as good as mine! Next we have What We Remember (1957), a suite of blurry photographs that are all that remains of one family's travels during that year. Look and then ask yourself- who will remember us when we're gone? Finally, there's Orphans -no not some doe-eyed waifs begging for table scraps. Here you'll find the best of the rest- over 80 slides of dragsters, dames, and other delectable treats.
A Brief Essay on Love- A series of photos representing love in all its guises.
Square America- A sprawling series of square format snapshots documenting American life from the late 1940s through the early 1970s.
The Portrait Gallery- A collection of portraits from the late 19th through the mid 20th century
In the Booth- A selection of photobooth photos and photomatics from the 1930s through the 1970s.
The Book of Sleep- A multitude of snapshots of sleeping people.
The Pocket Galleries- Where you'll find smaller shows of 5-25 photos. Now showing: Portfolio: Photos by "Chico", The North Shore Junior Craftsmen Airplane Club, Anonymous Mirror Portraits, The Sweet Science, The Voyeur, Portfolio: Martin Johnson, Jumpers, Just Maried, Play Ball, and Road Song.
In the Archives
The Pleasures and Terrors of Youth
The Square America 1st Anniversary Special
The Square America Christmas Spectacular
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