Andrea Robbins and Max Becher draw on a rich visual vocabulary gleaned as much from travel brochures, postcards and National Geographic as from the photography of Walker Evans, Edward Curtis and Stephen Shore. Their work, a somewhat surreal nonfiction, uses documentary images to examine contradictions of place and cultural identity: that is, when Germans tie on Native American headdresses and Midwesterners parade in Bavarian costumes, Robbins and Becher are there. In their own words, "The primary focus of our work is what we call the transportation of place--situations in which one limited or isolated place strongly resembles another distant one. Everywhere, not only in the new world, such situations are accumulating and accepted as genuine locales. Traditional notions of place, in which culture and geographic location neatly coincide, are being challenged by legacies of slavery, colonialism, holocaust, immigration, tourism and mass-communication. Whether the subject is Germany in Africa, Germans dressing as Native Americans, American towns dressed as Germany, New York in Las Vegas, New York in Cuba or Cuba in exile, our interest tends to be a place out of place with its various causes and consequences." Their work posits vital questions for a globalized world and for photography.
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Editorial Reviews
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"[The Transportation of Place] has just about everything: sharply observed photography, 'introductory' essays thoughtfully tucked away in the back of the book, and a consistent theme of understated absurdity that makes each chapter a real eye-opener." --Outdoor Photography
"The Brooklyn Bridge is in Las Vegas. Or at least it is in The Transportation of Place, Max Becher and Andrea Robbins's book of photos of places and people that have appropriated the iconography of somewhere or someone else. The results are both witty (Germans who dress up as Native Americans...) and disquieting (the chilling 'poverty theme park' in Americus, Georgia)--and wholly, gleefully disorienting." --Condé Nast Traveler
"Published in the contemporary context that finds identity performed and pictures influencing life, New York in Las Vegas and New Mexico in Spain, the book is an important contribution considering issues of place, its nuance and erosion by powerful forces past and present--colonization, tourism and globalization. It's also important food for the perennial problem of the document, further complicated by the fluidity of cultural signification." -- Julie Anand --Photo-Eye: The International Magazine of Photography Books
"The Brooklyn Bridge is in Las Vegas. Or at least it is in The Transportation of Place, Max Becher and Andrea Robbins's book of photos of places and people that have appropriated the iconography of somewhere or someone else. The results are both witty (Germans who dress up as Native Americans...) and disquieting (the chilling 'poverty theme park' in Americus, Georgia)--and wholly, gleefully disorienting." --Condé Nast Traveler
"Published in the contemporary context that finds identity performed and pictures influencing life, New York in Las Vegas and New Mexico in Spain, the book is an important contribution considering issues of place, its nuance and erosion by powerful forces past and present--colonization, tourism and globalization. It's also important food for the perennial problem of the document, further complicated by the fluidity of cultural signification." -- Julie Anand --Photo-Eye: The International Magazine of Photography Books
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bring a "Transportation of Place" to your bookshelf,
By Sean Miller "John Erickson Museum of Art (JEMA)" (Gainesville, Florida, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
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This review is from: Andrea Robbins & Max Becher: The Transportation of Place (Hardcover)
Transportation of Place, photographs by Andrea Robbins and Max Becher, is an exceptional collection of documentary photographs whereby Robbins and Becher record cultural conditions of simulation, mimesis, and re-enactments that occur due to political events, tourism, entertainment, and cultural longing. Their collaborative photos function as "surreal nonfiction" and demonstrate a lucid vision (as much as this is possible) of the growing global phenomenon of displacement, artifice, fabricated identity, and cultural confusion. Their work beautifully pinpoints conditions where simulated environments and personas become preferable to actual cultural or historical contexts. Robbins and Becher's photos of "places out of place" make it possible to imagine more clearly the consequences and complications of denying or subverting one's surroundings or identity. In addition their images give us insight into the global, postcolonial conditions enabling alienation, loss of identity, and loss of history of place.
German villages in Africa, "Old West" frontier towns in Spain, Wall Street in Cuba, New York in Vegas, people in Washington state altering local architecture and dress to become a Bavarian community, and people in Germany attempting to dress and live as Native Americans are just some of the interesting series presented by Robbins and Becher in this superb book. In addition, Transportation of Place includes excellent essays by Lucy Lippard and Maurice Berger. This book is a must-see/must-read for contemporary artists, photographers, art audiences, and anyone interested in travel, politics, or the humanities. One photographic series presented in the book documents "Old Tucson" (an outdoor film stage set - turned tourist attraction) in Arizona. "Old Tucson", constructed in 1938, miles away from, and built after the actual Tucson, Arizona, is neither "old" nor "Tucson." One image from the series keenly documents a wooden sign on the exterior of a "Candle Shop" that states in capital letters, "THESE BUILDINGS ARE ORIGINAL STRUCTURES FROM 1939's `ARIZONA' THEY WERE BUILT WITH ADOBE, THEN CONVERTED TO A WESTERN STREET THEN TO A MEXICAN COLONIAL STYLE FOR THE `THREE AMIGOS', RED TILE REPLACED THE ORIGINAL WOODEN BOARDWALKS, THE CURRENT FAÇADE IS APPROXIMATELY ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF THE ORIGINAL WESTERN BUILDINGS." Dislocated images and odd visual information of this nature illustrate why Robbins and Becher's work is truly "Surreal Nonfiction"... This is a wonderful book and highly recommended. -Sean Miller, John Erickson Museum of Art (JEMA)
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