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Stateside is Jackie Nickerson's sweeping, fragmented visual diary of a decade living and working across the USA. From streetscapes in Chicago to military installations on Hawaii, from Utah landscapes to New York skyscrapers, Nickerson used whatever camera she had at hand-medium format, 35mm, point and shoot, iPhone-to fix raw glimpses of America at this peculiar, precarious time. Her focus was less on specific locations than on repeated motifs, as if these photos could have been taken virtually anywhere in America. Chainlink fences, basketball courts, suburban houses and classrooms, gas stations and even battleships become markers of sameness, and of the functionalism that fuel's America's economy.Unlike other photobooks that trace a journey through America, both as place and idea (most famously Robert Frank's The Americans and Joel Sternfeld's American Prospects), in Stateside Nickerson avoids "definitive" images on individual pages. Instead she made large prints of her work, hung them in an overlapping sequence on her studio wall, and then re-photographed them. The result is a compelling, ongoing narrative of the complex, troubled America of today.
About the author
Jackie Nickerson is a conceptual documentary photographer. Her work is based on years-long research and is often portraiture; she explores the identities of her subjects and the effects of working in specific environments, such as religious communities in Ireland and farms in South Africa. Among Nickerson’s books are Farm (2002), Faith (2007), Terrain (2013), Field Test (2020) and Salvage (2021); her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Vatican Museums, Rome, and the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. She is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Summary
Stateside is Jackie Nickerson’s sweeping, fragmented visual diary of a decade living and working across the USA. From streetscapes in Chicago to military installations on Hawaii, from Utah landscapes to New York skyscrapers, Nickerson used whatever camera she had at hand—medium format, 35mm, point and shoot, iPhone—to fix raw glimpses of America at this peculiar, precarious time. Her focus was less on specific locations than on repeated motifs, as if these photos could have been taken virtually anywhere in America. Chainlink fences, basketball courts, suburban houses and classrooms, gas stations and even battleships become markers of sameness, and of the functionalism that fuel’s America’s economy.
Unlike other photobooks that trace a journey through America, both as place and idea (most famously Robert Frank’s The Americans and Joel Sternfeld’s American Prospects), in Stateside Nickerson avoids “definitive” images on individual pages. Instead she made large prints of her work, hung them in an overlapping sequence on her studio wall, and then re-photographed them. The result is a compelling, ongoing narrative of the complex, troubled America of today.
