20.000 miles of roadtrip, 70 days across the U.S.A. Not a lot to explain and lots to learn, admire, watch and listen. Presented by David Lynch, The Interview Project.

Unknown artist
Front Street, Looking North, Morgan City, LA, 1929

Walker Evans (American, 1903–1975)
[Street Scene, Morgan City, Louisiana], 1935

Vintage Postcard Photo 1950s W T Grant
Grants Department Store J C PENNEY Bellflower California

Stephen Shore Amarillo - Tall in Texas 1972 2 of 10 colour postcards

That's what Stephen Shore said to me during an amazing workshop in Madrid. He spoke about this situations in his early days in which he would be at the scene, and he would strongly look around trying to get the frame, the instant, the picture. He used to think "what would Walker Evans do?". He told me I used to think the same, but with Shore in my mind. I felt naked, because that was the case, at least sometimes.
Then a few days ago, I came across this beautiful book a few years old. And it reassures the importance of postcards in the development of american documentary photography and its connection to the Dusseldorf school.
To me, it also illustrates what Shore told me and something else. Walker Evans collected postcards done before, analyzed its visual working method and adopted it. He even printed some pictures in postcard paper, just like Shore would do, decades later, following those steps. Masters constructing their spectacular and unique development on previous images.
Then the words of the master gained more power, and gained authenticity. Shore felt real,earthly, Evans felt real, earthly, and me, and the way I look at them, felt that way too.

La gente del IED me ha dado la alegría de pedirme unas obras para su maravillosa iniciativa!
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The people at IED asked me for some work contribution to their wonderful initiative!

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Here.

Este emocionante documental sobre BYO (Better Youth Organization) y Youth Brigade es una pasada y una lección necesaria sobre lo que se puede conseguir desde la independencia y trabajando al margen de lo establecido. Tienes que verlo, de verdad de la buena.
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This moving documentary about BYO (Better Youth Organization) and Youth Brigade is a superb lesson on what you can achieve working independently and away from the usual methods of the establishment. You have to see it, really, I mean, honestly, watch it.

Talking with the amazing Abo, I talked about Mitch Epstein.
I'm bringing this up to show another example of a great photographer influenced by postcards and vernacular photography. He says that at that early stage of color photography, influences on the medium had to go over those areas, "outside" of the artistic area.
Looking at the postcard he shows as an example is easy to see why!

Ver arte en una postal en venta en una gasolinera de Indiana era algo complicado en 1950. Ahora no nos lo parece. De hecho, gracias a este libro que compré en San Francisco me he dado cuenta de la cantidad de "obras de arte" que andan circulando por el mundo en forma de postal.
La colección recopilada en este volumen (hay otro llamado "Boring Postcards") está compuesta por postales de Estados unidos. Lugares desolados, parkings, centros comerciales, moteles, autopistas, dinners, gasolineras. Todo estaba ahi, antes de convertirse en toda una corriente fotográfica exportada a todo el planeta.

Sin escuela de Düsseldorf, sin Stephen Shore, sin nadie que les dijera que eso que hacían era arte, nos encontramos con fotógrafos que estaban retratando sus "lugares comunes" en preciosas fotografías de la "nada", transformándola en "todo".

Shore hizo una serie de postales en 1972 imitando al 100% el estilo de estos desconocidos fotógrafos. Esa serie le condujo a una evolución lógica en la obsesión por el detalle, la composición y el dominio del motivo a fotografiar. Y el resultado fue un momento cumbre en la fotografía en color y en el mundo del Arte.

Pero viendo estas postales, estas fotos "no artísticas", me doy cuenta de que, aunque la Fotografía no hubiese sido aceptada como ARTE (respetadísimos profesores de Arte piensan que no debe serlo), ésta habría crecido al margen de las grandes artes. Y también me doy cuenta de que habría dado igual, porque su magia brillaría de cualquier modo.

Postcards without Art:

Seeing art in a postcard on sale at a gas station in Indiana during the 50's was not easy. Now it doesn't seem so difficult. In fact, thanks to this book I bought in San Francisco, I've realised how many "works of art" are circulating over the world in the form of post cards.
The collection shown in this book (there's another one called plainly "Boring Postcards") it's composed by postcards from the USA. Empty places, parking lots, shopping malls, motels, highways, dinners, gas stations.
Everything was there, before becoming such a strong photographic theme all over the art world.

Without Düsseldorf Art School, without Stephen Shore, without anybody telling them that what they were doing was art, through these pages, we come across photographers that were picturing their "common places" in beautiful pictures of "nothing" turning it into "everything".

Shore made a series of postcards in 1972, 100% imitating this unknown photographers style. That drove him to a logic development in his obsession for detail, composition and control over the subject of his photography. And the result was a crucial point in color photography and in the Art world as we know it.

But seeing these pictures, these "non-artistic" photographs, I realise that, even if photography hadn't been accepted as Art (some highly respected art teachers still don't think it should be), it would have grown anyway, away from the main arts. And I also realise, that it wouldn't have mattered, because its magic would have shined anyway.