AMERICA CLOSE UP 2008
Photo
“America Close Up” is a series comprising several photographs showing people who appear to be thinking as they contemplate Jasper Johns’ Flag at MoMA, New York. What does this flag truly represent? What does it symbolise? What is America today? What remains of the utopias that are the basis of creation? What is the place of each of these viewers? Produced at the time of the elections that saw Barack Obama become president, this series highlights the incredible potential of such a time in a great modern democracy. It represents a key moment, a diagnosis that may be severe, a “shock treatment” that will reawaken the civic aspirations indispensable to the survival of any democratic system, while answering the questions that the citizens stopping in turn before this painting may be asking themselves.
Yves Peltier