I have lived in the United States for almost half of my life, but I doubt that I will ever fully understand its intricacies. This is not because the US is more complex or sophisticated than any other country. It’s because there is a difference between taking in a world through unfiltered immersion (as I did growing up in Germany) and through dedicated (and thus filtered) and willful exposure (as I’m doing now).
An easy and somewhat related way to express this is that after all of these years I still have a slight accent when speaking English (invariably described as either German or, and this is the other somewhat perplexing option, European [as if there were a European language]).
I’m probably not the best person to discuss photography made in Athens, Ohio, because I lack a lot of the cultural pointers that someone who grew up in the US would have. I understand some of the ideas behind, say, the Midwest or what is called the heartland; but there is no emotional connection whatsoever. Even with the one place in the US that I feel emotionally connected to (Boston, MA) I am still puzzled about many cultural aspects.
Furthermore, for all kinds of reasons I am deeply suspicious of pride that centers on locale, however wide one wants to cast that net. About 20 years ago, I lived in Pittsburgh, PA, a city whose inhabitants expressed their own pride in what I thought was an excessive fashion. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice enough city. Is it the Paris of the Appalachia, though? Well, I did spend a few months in Paris (France, not Texas), and I can report that, well, no. It’s not even that I like Paris that much, but let’s be realistic here.
With all of that said, I think that people who grew up in the United States and people like me will look at Rich-Joseph Facun‘s 1804 differently. In general, we all look at photography with different eyes. If we dive into what drives why we see what we think we see, we can learn a lot about ourselves (and, of course, about what’s in the photographs). But this plays out differently for different types of photography, and it plays out differently for different subject matters.
At the end of the book, there’s a short text that concludes with the statement that “1804 considers the ways in which heritage, socioeconomics, and youth culture are shaped by the dominant institution in an Appalachian town” (the dominant institution being Ohio University). I suppose in some fashion, I might agree with that, even though the statement is very broad.
What bothers me about the statement, though, is that it shoehorns the beauty of the work, in particular the portraits, into a very specific direction. As I outlined above, in part this is because for me, “Appalachian town” is not the kind of trigger that it appears to be for many people, a trigger that results in all kinds of predetermined ideas and conclusions.
When I moved to Pittsburgh, I encountered an interesting city. But I felt as if a lot of people were unable to see some of that beauty because they were too tied to seeing “Pittsburgh”, that very specific entity with its very specific history. I don’t mean to imply that one is necessarily better than the other. In fact, I do think that out of a dialogue between these two poles something marvelous might emerge (if we allow it to).
I suppose a different way of expressing the book would be for people to ignore where it was photographed (at least for a while) to see the photographs — the portraits, some of the other pictures feel like fillers — in ways that deviate from the kind of predetermined access they might otherwise have.
Especially in light of all of that which surrounds me and everybody else in the US right now (you will have to imagine me making a resigned and quite exhausted gesture with my arms all around me), I’m thinking that we need to see the people again — and much less the ideas that have come to dominate almost all of the discourse (if we even want to call all the shouting a discourse).
1804 makes me curious about the people in its pictures, and that’s a good thing at a time when every effort is being made to stifle people’s curiosity — and by extension their empathy — for each other.
Seen this way, the specificity of the selection of the people in the book — photographed in Athens, Ohio — actually is a bonus. It is true, you might not find exactly these kinds of people in Everett, MA or WA. But in order to see people for who they are, and in order for us to be able to see ourselves in other people again, we have to start somewhere.
Most of the encounters that led to the taking of the portraits appear to have been chance ones. Most of the encountered are young, their youth showing either in their slightly awkward display of a maturity that they not yet have (which I find endearing) or in not yet being able to fully hide their vulnerability the way people my age do (ditto).
These young people seem open to this world, which is sure to disappoint them soon enough. Maybe this time around, we — by which I mean the rest of us, the people who are older — can attempt to help them find less disappointment than we encountered?
After all, just because too many of us have become accustomed to their bitterness, a bitterness that in part is being driven by demagogues who exploit some of the ideas that go into, say, “Appalachian town”, that doesn’t mean that the next generation have to live through it, too.
I sense kindness behind the taking of the portraits in 1804. There’s tenderness.
Kindness and tenderness can be lost. But they can also be re-acquired, one little act at the time — whether it’s taking a stranger’s photograph, looking at a different stranger’s photographs, or any other gestures that accept a stranger the way they are.
1804; photographs and text by Rich-Joseph Facun; 116 pages; Liars Corner; 2025
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