{"id":1742,"date":"2009-07-07T11:36:23","date_gmt":"2009-07-07T11:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.foto8.com\/live\/?p=1742"},"modified":"2009-07-07T11:36:23","modified_gmt":"2009-07-07T11:36:23","slug":"american-youth-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.foto8.com\/live\/american-youth-redux\/","title":{"rendered":"American Youth – Redux"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\u00a9
Jumping Rock, North Liberty, Iowa \u00a9 Danny Wilcox Frazier, 2008 from American Youth<\/span><\/p>\n

American Youth
Redux<\/p>\n

Love it or loathe it, you can\u2019t help but be seduced by it. What? America? Fuck, yeah! As a country that came of age with photography – during the gold rush years – it\u2019s always had a heightened awareness of its own representation. So this compilation, the ambitiously-titled American Youth<\/em>, edited by New York agency Redux using its own photographers\u2019 work, has a cachet that most catalogue-style publications lack. It\u2019s been sitting around the Foto8 offices for a while, shooting out secret little smiles to me as I walk past the \u2018books for review\u2019 table. And, blame it on the sunshine, but today felt like the right day to write about it.<\/p>\n

Heavily mythologised in literature, the youth of America have even had names through which to chart their evolution, as contributing essayist Steve Appleford points out, from the so-called Greatest Generation to the iGeneration. There is something hauntingly post-apocalyptic about the cover picture by Erika Larsen: three boys and two girls in the Arizona dessert, embalmed by the golden light of the magic hour. Uniformly dressed in jeans and hoodies, their gaze is held by the setting sun, which may, as they hover on the perilous cusp of their adult years, take down with it the very ashes of their childhoods. <\/p>\n

Divided with bland agency-speak keywords into four (pretty much interchangeable) sections \u2013 Live, Love Work and Play \u2013 the work here is nevertheless of a consistently high standard. While we know none of the 25 photographers made these photographs especially for such a publication, it still has a cohesive feel as well as some stand-out images among the shot-for-stock. Among these is another Larsen image, this time a portrait of two young men so closely entwined it\u2019s hard to tell where one begins and the other ends. A series in black and white by Danny Wilcox Frazier at Jumping Rock on the Iowa River captures the unique cocktail of youth: hazy nihilism combined with crazy invincibility, a sort of Die Forever mentality when the sea is sparkling just for you, stirred and definitely shaken.<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/div>\n

Simon 22 & Simeon 23.They have been dating for 9 months<\/span>\u00a9 Erika Larsen 2009 from American Youth<\/p>\n

Through these photographs we see kids grappling with issues of identity, sexuality, religion and race. Some are into politics, some fight for their country, while for others, children of speed freaks, teenage alcoholics, the most pressing thing on their minds is finding a bed for the night. Two grids of portraits by Ben Baker have been created to depict the current racial demographic and a prediction for 50 years time. In common with several major US cities, San Francisco for example, the minority ethnic groups have become the majority. What\u2019s fascinating is the way in which skin colour is far from being the defining factor; it\u2019s much more interesting to look at an individual\u2019s demeanour; the way they choose to present themselves to the camera, what they give and what they hold back. While it would be na\u00efve to feel overly optimistic about equality of opportunity in a country where the prison population is overwhelmingly young black and male, you can\u2019t help but feel there\u2019s a change coming on. <\/p>\n

Of course, America\u2019s – or any country\u2019s – youth wouldn\u2019t want all this heavy stuff pinned on them. Like the final image from this collection by Joshua Lutz of a tanned young woman hanging out with her friends, having a beer, youth wants to have a good time, it wants to get loaded. It\u2019s photography\u2019s perfect subject matter because of the qualities they share: they\u2019re each ephemeral, ubiquitous and ultimately indefinable. Oh, and endlessly fascinating to look at.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Max Houghton looks at American Youth, a compilation of work by Redux photographers and finds the subjects compelling. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[19],"tags":[900],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nAmerican Youth - Redux - FOTO8<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" 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