Dramatic black-and-white photographs portray a changing Midwest of vanishing towns and transformed landscapes
In Iowa / Seamus Heaney v
Foreword / Robert Frank x
Photographs 1
Acknowledgments 118
Danny Wilcox Frazier is a freelance photographer. Raised in Le Claire, a small Iowa town that sits along the Mississippi River, he now lives in Iowa City. Frazier has a master’s degree from the University of Iowa, and he has received awards from the University of Missouri’s Pictures of the Year International, including its 2004 Community Awareness Award for selections of his work from Iowa. He has also received a Stanley Fellowship, as well as awards from the National Press Photographers Association and the Society of Professional Journalists. His images have appeared in such publications as the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, Mother Jones, U.S. News & World Report, Life, and Forbes.
Robert Frank is one of America’s preeminent photographers. His complex and visionary photographs of postwar America, as well as his later films and videos, have greatly influenced the work of generations of artists. Frank’s book The Americans (1958) brought him international attention and marked a turning point in photography. The National Gallery of Art in Washington founded the Robert Frank Collection in 1990. He has received numerous awards, including an International Photography Award from the Hasselblad Foundation in Sweden and a Cornell Capa Award from the International Center of Photography in New York.
“Driftless is Frazier’s document about rural Iowa. His home. . . .
Years of working, walking, photographing, carefully making notes,
names, places. . . . Inhabitants: Farmers, Migrant Workers, their
families, Hunters, Churches, Trailers, Storms, Open Fields, Sunday
Night. . . . Passionate photographs without sentimentality. His
work reaches out: let me tell your story, it is important.
Frazier’s work will survive—his book will be the foundation for
more to come. . . .”—Robert Frank, prize judge
“I wanted to explore the lives of the people who stay, who are
casualties of the growing economic divide that separates America’s
rural and metropolitan classes. Having lived in Iowa all my life,
these forgotten communities are part of my own history.”—Danny
Wilcox Frazier
“Driftless, shot in black-and-white film in a digital age, creates
a lonely aura. Young people in trailers framed by beer-can
pyramids. Harsh winter blizzards. Cold gun barrels. Old people in
barren spaces. . . . Many of the photos are grainy because Frazier
didn't use artificial lighting and had to 'push' the film
speed. It lends a gritty reality to the shots.”
*Des Moines Register*
“[Frazier’s] pictures of people recall the street-kid photos of
Helen Levitt, the active group images in Ben Shahn’s FSA work, and
the famous book The Americans (1959), by Robert Frank, who judged
the competition this book won. Elegiacism and a certain bitterness
inform the album as a whole. No one looks prosperous; even the
young partiers don’t seem cheery. Maybe they’ll all be living in
cities in a year. Powerful stuff.”
*Booklist*
“The book is incredible for its raw intimacy and visual
sophistication. . . .”
*Wired*
“Frazier presents a compelling look at life in contemporary Iowa.
When chronicling just the land, Frazier portrays it in a harsh and
biting manner through the use of high-contrast and grainy imagery.
When documenting Iowa's people, Frazier plays the role of a fly on
the wall. He is able to blend in with all sorts of characters in
all types of situations, a hallmark of a well-rounded
photojournalist. . . . Frazier's melancholy Driftless achieves
success in the Iowan's choice to shoot in a style more concerned
with content and free-flowing compositions than with the rigors of
technical matters such as precise exposure and exacting horizon
lines.”
*Chicago Sun-Times*
“Frazier’s images endeavor to shed light on the people and places
that mainstream media neglects to illustrate. As rural economies
fail, people and resources are migrating to the coasts and cities,
altering rural America. Taken by an insider who has lived in Iowa
his entire life, Frazier’s photographs show us these abandoned
places and describe the lives of those people who stay behind. His
approach is completely different than this spring’s news stories
about Iowa’ spring flooding, which presumed that the impacts,
although awful, were limited to the present; nowhere on national
media were reports of the long lasting effects of the flooding on
Iowa’s already unstable rural economy.”
*Rain Taxi*
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
