Thomas Kern lived and worked in America for eight years. He used this time to travel extensively and compile journalistic essays about a country that is already very thoroughly documented. Over 70 years after Walker Evans’s social documentary photographs and 50 years after Robert Frank’s The Americans he has successfully deployed his vividly laconic black-and-white pictures to convey an authentic, disparate image of present-day America. He is a silent observer, and the subject of his work remains the unspectacular every life of the country and its people. A visual commentary on the state of the nations in pictures that appear to be familiar and available for rapid consumption, and yet remain remarkably resistant.
“One can say everything and nothing about America. America traps everyone between a myth that will never die and a reality that people like to ignore. This is a country that is open and lucid everywhere, but never admits a single interpretation. That we all recognize but never quite know properly. We want to find this country.” — Gerhard Waldherr
