You Can't Spell America Without Eric - Hardcover

9781576873403: You Can't Spell America Without Eric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1576873404 ISBN 13: 9781576873403

Publisher: powerHouse Books, 2006

You Can’t Spell America Without Eric, photographer Eric Payson’s fourth monograph, is a contemporary memoir of the people and places encountered by the artist during his travels throughout the United States. In the great tradition of the American road trip, Payson journeys from New York to Los Angeles with stops in the deep South and the sunbelt, documenting his encounters and revealing a dynamic diversity of experiences. With a keen eye for detail and razor-sharp wit, Payson dissects his America with a stunning Technicolor vision. A woman is frozen in mid-air in the instant before she plunges into a pool; a man is captured, arm outstretched, as he releases a handful of breadcrumbs into the wind for a group of birds overhead; a young girl, wide-eyed and ears covered, screams in her mother’s arms. Featuring an essay by Britt Salvesen, curator of the Center for Creative Photography, You Can’t Spell America Without Eric is the culmination of his compelling vision of American culture.

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About the Author:

Eric Payson is a photographer and performance artist. Solo exhibitions of his photographs have been mounted at Galerie Bodo Niemann, Berlin and Rene Fotouhi Fine Art, East Hampton, New York. Payson’s trilogy of powerHouse Books include Ghostplay, Gladiators, and Bobcats (2005, 2004, and 2002, respectively). He lives in New York.

Britt Salvesen holds an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and a PhD from the University of Chicago. She is currently the Curator of the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ, and has held posts at the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago. Salvesen has curated nine exhibitions and written or edited numerous texts. Salvesen is the recipient of a Paul Mellon Fellowship for Studies in British Art and the curator and co-author of Harry Callahan: The Photographer at Work (Yale University Press, 2005), a major traveling exhibition and book organized for the CCP. She lives in Tucson, AZ.

From Publishers Weekly:

New York photographer Payson is the author of three previous powerHouse collections: Ghostplay, Gladiators and Bobcats. This departure from single-word thematic titling takes him around the country, and deep into current forms of Americana. The book finds him, in the words of Center for Creative Photography curator Britt Salvesen (who provides an essay), taking in things "blatant and subtle." One of the 125 full-color 12.25'' x 9.25'' photos shows a woman in shadow in such a way that she could be wearing a hijab, or she could just have thick, dark hair; she's clutching two tiny, globular red fruits that seem to channel desire from all corners. Another photo, garishly lit, shows a little girl nestled in a fat adult's crotch; the adult, whose gender is ambiguous, wears a crazily embroidered American flag top, and is sticking a pinwheel in the child's face. Sex, food, bodies, light and cars are constants here, and Payson catches them at moments at once decadadent and intimate in repose.
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