Customer Reviews

Driftless: Photographs from Iowa (Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography)

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I viewed this entire portfolio at a web site provided by the Duke University. Most of the photographs are dramatic and vibrant. Often, the images show some odd structure in the foreground with a cluster of people in the background. Typically, the photographs show the lower classes, but a few of the images depict well-dressed people practicing their religion, or engaging in a civic activity. And a few of the images do not have any people and instead disclose the desolate, flat emptiness that is typical of the middle west.

Some of the images are as follows:
(1) Migrant workers tossing watermelons on wagon;
(2) A bull rider with incredible muscles walking near a stack of cut logs;
(3) A slaughterhouse;
(4) A graveyard;
(5) A man with a pistol shooting bottles;
(6) A clothesline with wind-blown towels and, in the center background between the towels, a woman entering her trailer home. The woman assumes an unusual and unique posture, as she climbs some steps.
(7) A group of deer hunters toting rifles, milling around at the entrance to a cow pastur;, with some cows in the background; and
(8) A wedding party on a parade float.

Nearly all of the photographs are in sharp focus. Occasionally, we find a sharp-focus picture with a blurry object, such as a dog, in the close-foreground. The technique of taking a photo of a typical subject (perhaps 5 feet away from the lens) with a large, blurry object located very close to the lens (about ten inches from the camera) is not a rare technique. I use this same technique for my own photography at children's birthday parties and children's Halloween parties.

The images in DRIFTLESS fit well into an established genre. Other examples of this genre include:

(1) IN THE AMERICAN WEST (1996) by Richard Avedon;
(2) PHOTOGRAPHS FROM ONE YEAR (1983) by Nicholas Nixon;
(3) SOCIAL GRACES (1984) by Larry Fink;
(4) APPALACHIAN PORTRAITS (1993) by Shelby Lee Adams; and
(5) GRIMM STREET (2005) by Mark Cohen.

I am a great admirer of the first four of these books. PHOTOGRAPHS FROM ONE YEAR by Nicholas Nixon is one of my favorite photography books of all time. IN THE AMERICAN WEST is distinguished in that the actual photographic prints are about 5 feet tall. I saw an exhibit of IN THE AMERICAN WEST in the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C. APPLACHIAN PORTRAITS is excellent in terms of composition, uniqueness, and image quality, but some of the images in APPALACHIAN PORTRAITS are so bizarre that a typical person would find no solace in looking at them (we find snake handlers, and hillbillies looking like escapees from a mental institution). But I do not care for GRIMM STREET. I found only two or three of the images in GRIMM STREET to be interesting. Most of the photographs in GRIMM STREET are unbearably blurry and grainy. I tossed GRIMM STREET into the garbage.

To conclude, DRIFTLESS:PHOTOGRAPHS FROM IOWA features sharp-focus images, with excellent contrast (ranging from bright whites to jet blacks), and plenty of variety. Variety takes the form of inhabitants of trailer homes, hunters toting rifles, tawdry scenes in taverns, and straightforward landscapes. My thumbnail descriptions of the photographs do not do justice to the photos. The watermelon tossing photograph, is a once-in-a-lifetime photograph, that will likely be the envy of most street photographers.

They are depressing pictures. definitely if you were to take color photos in the spring and summer there would be a much different mood. it conveys sadness for a corner of the world which seems to be slowly dying away. the pictures really got at the core of what it means to be iowan, the snow and cold that you just deal with, the openess-- land that goes on forever with nothing hidden, the partying and drinking on one hand and the amish on the other, the humility and lack of pretense of the people.

The idea has merit: to capture the feel of a changing Iowa, with the relentless agri business taking over the individual farms, small towns built up over decades on many of the State's crossroads now disappearing, their inhabitants, having either worked on the land or in local industries but now drifting away. This is an opportunity for a cracking photo story.

What I see in these pages, though is an aimless series of poorly cropped and framed photos, frequently with fuzzy shapes and just far too many lopsided horizons and uprights. Oddly, very few seem to be (visually) unique to Iowa, they could just as easily have been taken in other Plains' states.

For this kind of reportage style you have to go back to the FSA photos of the Thirties and there is a book devoted to the State: Unknown Iowa: Farm Security photos, 1936-1941 Unfortunately it was very poorly produced by a Kalona, Iowa, printer in 1977. However the sixty-seven photos by Lee, Rothstein, Vachon and Post Wolcott beautifully capture the feel of the people and the land. They clearly have a sense of place and tell a story which I felt was more or less missing from Frazier's contemporary look at Iowa because his photos are too personal and subjective (and I wonder if he takes them quickly, too).

The book is reasonably looking production with the eighty photos printed as 175 screen duotones on an excellent matt art paper. Unusually the book was printed in Britain rather that the US or China. The publisher thinks a Foreword by Robert Frank might give the publication some credence but he writes less than 130 words. Perhaps more relevant would have been some observations from Danny Frazier.

>>>LOOK INSIDE THE BOOK by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.

The sugar-coated, romanticized, or one dimensional view of "Middle-America" would have us believe that Iowa is only a land of covered bridges, fields of dreams, or over weight mall moms casting their red state ballots. But the world where Danny Wilcox Frazier lives is the real deal, and he explores it deeply with his camera in ways that are never sentimental and trite or judgemental and cruel. He finds stunning beauty and intrigue in the daily lives of real Iowans around him.

This is the most powerful collection of photography released in 2007.

Danny Wilcox Frazier's book of photographs, Driftless, is just that. The reportage/documentary style body of images is an aimless collection of photographs tethered together by the vague theme of "Iowa." Some are excellent, many are poor. There are many pictures that capture an utterly indecisive moment, causing one to wonder what its purpose in the book is. Nothing in the volume totally blew me away. Furthermore, the quality of the printing feels flimsy and the layout, with a combination of full bleed two-page spreads and smaller pictures vertically off-set on opposite pages, leaves a lot to be desired.

Full disclosure: I am not qualified to write this review. I haven't really, thoughtfully perused the book yet...

Opposing argument: ...but the damn thing's been sitting on my coffee table since Christmas, and if it had looked more engaging to me when my husband (a devout Hawkeye) flipped through it after he unwrapped it, I'd have torn through that mofo three weeks ago.

I hate, hate, hate to say this about the work of someone from the clean, pure state of Iowa. But, the images struck me as depressing. And maybe that's the point! It's art, right? But then, plenty of National Geographic photos are bleak in nature without making you want to die a faster death.

My husband's only words: This cost 27 dollars? It seems a tad thin for 27 dollars.