Last Updated on 10/10/2017 by Chris Gampat
All images by Kenneth Wajda via Kickstarter
In the spirit of documentary photography from the era of Dorothea Lange, photographer and photojournalist Kenneth Wajda aims to create a photo book of documentary images that will introduce America to the Americans. The inspiration behind it is the initiative of Roy Stryker: the economist, government official, and photographer who commissioned Lange, among others, as part of the documentary photography movement of the Farm Security Administration (FSA).
Kenneth, believing that the same zeal for documentary projects in the US remains important to this day, created the Roy Styker Photo Project. The goal is to amass a collection of photos showing the real America today to Americans, taken in film so that he “can be assured as much as possible that the photographs in the collection are authentic.
Taking this large-scale project up a notch, Kenneth has taken on a Kickstarter campaign to help fund a photo book inspired by the FSA documentary photography movement. Much like how Roy Stryker did, he aims to get on board film documentary photographers from all 50 states to take part in the project and contribute photographs for the book.
“My goal with the funds is to publish a book of the most powerful images after traveling to 50 states, photographing and recruiting other film photographers to contribute to the collection. I want to build the collection to represent American life–the most ordinary and extraordinary parts of life here in the U.S., in all 50 states.”
Kenneth tells us more in his campaign video below.
In his campaign page, Kenneth actually asks some pretty interesting questions, whose answers aim to be eye-openers for Americans.
“Where can you see what real life in eastern Colorado looks like right now? That part of the state outside of the major Front Range cities (Denver, Boulder, Ft. Collins, Colorado Springs) where rural folks live? Itâs an area I intend to photograph because I donât even know what life is like there.
“I can plug any townâs name into a Facebook search and find phone snaps, but is that who we are? I can look up the local news source for that area, but is that accurate to the life of those living there, or just the crime and news big enough worth reporting?”
The campaign for his FSA-inspired photo book ends on October 30th, and needs a whopping $48,000. If this project is something you’d like to support, make sure to drop your pledges on his Kickstarter campaign while there’s still time.
