Later this month, creative studio Enlarge Your Memories, in partnership with Italian  lens-based bookstore Micacamera will open the doors to an exhibition entitled Playing for Keeps,  featuring the work of American photographers Molly Matalon and Caroline Tompkins.

This exhibition, set to open in the Micacamera space in Milan, will tell the tale of a contemporary woman’s viewpoint of romanticized America. With its infamous patriarchal history, the typical photography that addresses American ‘landscape’ has tendency to only display the postcard values of automobiles, family values and great outdoors.  However, in 2019, the idea of American lives have been expanded on by a wealth of cultural and artistic effort.

Throughout this exhibition Molly Matalon takes on a domestic point of view as she explores the narrative of the housewife. She explores the part of the typical housewife’s world not shown on camera. Portraits of home visitors, palpable sexual tension etc. With the compilation of images, she addresses the freedoms and power plays commonly associated with men in like-environment and in photography. On the other hand, Caroline Tompkins’ work embodies the female YOLO America. It displays a narrative of the fast life, climbing the highest trees, hiking the tallest mountains, getting too close to the fire.

Tompkins’ work denounces gender stereotypes and strives for a reclamation of the pseudo masculine American landscape as she schools her audience on how gratifying it is to live life with the wind blowing through one’s hair. In Playing For Keeps, the photographers explore and update the ideas of humour, sexuality, ownership and power play within today’s contemporary America. 

Tags: Americana, exhibition, exhibitions, female photographers, photography

Photographer Yoshiyuki Matsumura may have grown up in Osaka, Japan, but his lens if firmly trained on the people and landscapes of deepest America.

With his American Samples project “strongly influenced” by the work of Robert Frank (The Americans), Stephen Shore (American Surfaces and Uncommon Places) and Joel Sternfeld (American Prospects), his nostalgic portrayals of different towns and their inhabitants are both striking yet familiar.

“It was shot in many different places in the States because I wanted to capture the whole of America,” Yoshiyuki told us, “I crossed America six times by train from New York to LA, stopping along the way.”

Using kit like a Pentax 67, Ricoh GR1v and Konica Big Mini, and having “endurance in the dark room” all contribute towards the resulting hazy finish of Yoshiyuki’s style. A self-declared fondness for the film Stand By Me as a child also may have played a part.

South Carolina

Despite having met and photographed a multitude of characters throughout his travels, there are some that stick with Yoshiyuki: such as the kids seen here in South Carolina. “The young boy and girl are meeting at the corner on the street,” he told us. “She lives in the house near the corner. She is not wearing any shoes. I think they will go out soon. I love their distance.”

Someone once told Yoshiyuki: “You know more about America than Americans.” And by the looks of these images, we think they may just be right. Take a trip with us now.

Oregon

West Virginia

Iowa

Alabama

New Mexico

Missisippi

Yokiyushi Matsumura is represented by Quadriga; quadriga.fr

Tags: American, Americana, nostalgia, photography, Yoshiyuki Matsumura