John Lehr: 'The Island Position'

All Images: John Lehr: 'The Island Position', London, MACK, 2019

I recently came across these images, from a new photographic publication, entitled 'The Island Position' [1.], by American photographer, John Lehr, and was instantly drawn to them.  Anyone familiar with the kind of imagery that regularly crops up here, may find that relatively unsurprising - but I guess we all like what we like, when it comes down to it.

Certainly, shop fronts and retail windows, particularly of the smaller, more mundane variety, have appeared in my own photography, on numerous occasions.  Likewise, the integration of found texts into a visual image have long been part of my own practice - as has the focussed concentration on a specific location (or detail of).

I could even imagine having captured the image above on Leicester's Melton Road, where - I swear, I've observed essentially the same combination of neon signage, sky blue graphics and stacked packaging in at least one window, quite recently.

However, there is also something specifically American about these photos, I think.  This goes beyond the dollar signs and culturally specific references scattered amongst the signage - having as much to do with the even blast of intense sunlight illuminating each subject, and a kind of bland Modernism - typical of much (often low-rise) vernacular U.S. architecture.  These are the premises of a commercial culture which reached some kind of seeming apotheosis in the post-war Twentieth Century, as opposed to the Victorian era - as might be the case here in Britain.  They may recall the photography of Walker Evans or even the painting of Edward Hopper, from an earlier era - in terms of subject matter, but the real stylistic reference point would seem to be the Photorealist painters of the 1960s and 70s.

However, as an illuminating interview with Lehr, on www.americansuburbx.com reveals, these photos are more than simple formal exercises in a particular visual tradition.  Lehr claims to be monitoring, 

"an empire teetering back and forth over a line of regression and progress (as it has been if not morally, certainly economically) for nearly one hundred years." [2.], 

and also claims that, 

"what you see in the pictures are the outward displays of people participating in a system that will never deliver on its promises" [3.].  

In fact, what he is really documenting is a world in which money increasingly circulates through a virtual economy, rather than via physical outlets.  Even where the windows of those remaining premises might advertise themselves as portals to that online world, or stack up boxes of the very devices used to access it - they are destined to be forever behind its curve.  That would seem to be the particularly contemporary message behind the tawdry desperation really on display there.  Lehr may be part of a fairly venerable tradition - in terms of his chosen subject matter, but here - he feels like a distinctly twenty-first century outlier within it.  His is a status report from an American high street most likely to soon disappear altogether, in its accepted form.

Something else to strike a chord with me, is Lehr's assertion,

"I have nothing against a conceptual way of working, but what interests me as an artist is stumbling onto something through a process that is open to intuition and serendipity. I love the idea that I can begin my day as a photographer not knowing what I want to mean but through the process of photographing I can uncover something. It’s often the pictures themselves, not my ideas that drive things forward" [4.].

Despite my various forays into something a little more ideas-driven, in recent years, that still remains pretty much my own preferred starting point for most projects.



[1.]: John Lehr, 'The Island Position', London, MACK, 2019.

[2.], [3.] & [4.]: Brad Feuerhelm & John Lehr, 'John Lehr: The Island Position Interview',  www. american suburbx.com , March 2019.