DISAPPEARING AMERICA

© Jeff Dunas 1992,1993,1994,1995,1996, 1997, 1998, 1999

All rights reserved

Soon to be published as a major book!

This series began in 1992 and continues to this day.
A show containing 100 exhibition prints is currently touring Italy,
sponsored by the Mamiya Camera Corporation and Kodak Italia.

As we are now at the very end of the twentieth century, I see
the last moments of opportunity to document and preserve in photographic
form, the way America looked and felt when I take a trip in the
back of my minds eye to my childhood.

As I move into my fourth decade of life, my third as a photographer,
I find myself intensely interested in moving through the American
landscape, and with it the American experience, creating a view of
America as I see it. The speed at which things change on the coasts are astounding, but
happily the life that lies between the two oceans changes much more slowly
and there exists still much of the early and middle part of this century to photographically consider.
I find myself looking for the symbols and the proofs of the way I was raised to
feel about America in the fifties and sixties - America's symbols of its
power and pride, the evidence of its heyday. The magnificent automobile,
symbols to Americans and citizens of the world that we could design
the biggest, the best machines with which to mobilize ourselves
in totally modern and even futurist fashion. The designs of these great behemoths
that now lie rusting away in silent graveyards across the nation speak of the fall from
industrial might and leadership we have experienced.
They allow us to reflect on the way things have changed, metaphorically at least.
The sturdy, simple and honest construction of the buildings from the early
part of the century reflected the American values of their times.
The faces of the people, and mostly that
of the children haven't changed out there in Nebraska, Iowa, or Mississippi.
The adults have visually responded to the violent intrusion of the lives we live in New York and Los Angeles
via television and so we see the influences of the media but not in the children who remain true
to their innate character while under the age of media influence.
Kids still swim in water holes and climb trees in the heartland rather than use computers
to wage interplanetary warfare or watch MTV.

I want to capture for myself and anyone in the future who will have access to the work I produce,
the sense of what it was to grow up in the mid -twentieth century,
in what may have been America's true moment of greatness,
at the height of its influence.. A kinder and gentler time
is only the allusion from forty years later; yes I realize this but I was a ten-year-old cub scout in 1964
and I remember it as do millions of other baby-boomers my age.
To create images that reflect this for me and others is my pursuit in this series.

A 72 page catalogue, printed in duo-tone by Euroteam in Italy and containing 48 images including covers,
is available at $25 each. Please CLICK here for information on how to order your copy
of this catalogue or order a print.

Thank you .

JEFF DUNAS