Bookstore Gallery Auctions Blog Editions VisualServer
 
BEST OF 2012
BEST OF 2011
BEST OF 2010
BEST OF 2009
BACK TO BLOG HOME f.a.q.mastheadinquiriesfeedbackadvertisenewsletter
back
back
Pontiac
view comments [5]
Reviewed by Karen Jenkins, published on Thursday, February 16, 2012
Font Size: T T T | print | email
Gerry Johansson Pontiac
Photographs by Gerry Johansson
Mack, , 2011. Hardbound. 160 pp., 102 duotone illustrations, 7x9-3/4".
Pontiac Photographs by Gerry Johansson Published by Mack, 2011.
I must leave it to a different expert to say whether the car on the cover of Pontiac, with its solid body and custom wheels, is the namesake of this Michigan town and its now-defunct auto brand. Regardless, it's a funny sort of portrait, proud but behind the times, an uneasy emblem of a beleaguered industry town on the decline. Gerry Johansson has produced six books of photography that focus on specific geographic places from his native Sweden to America. And this spare beige volume from MACK, with its hyper-legible font and immaculately printed photographs certainly starts off like some sort of primer. Its didactic first note is underscored by the photographs' only companion text: a list of demographic facts and figures for Pontiac from the state's housing and development authority. Some are relatively neutral in tone, while others spell out a ten-year, relentless rise in unemployment and poverty. And surely the book contains images of chewed-up parking lots and overgrown yards seemingly inhabited by no one. Yet the collective impact of these photographs defies a narrow meaning or foregone conclusions.
Pontiac, by Gerry Johansson. Published by Mack, 2011.

Pontiac has a lot to do with the idea of architecture as the defining vernacular of a city or town. All the basic forms are here: house, church, school, office building and shopping mall. Johansson's photographs collect the idiosyncrasies and hallmarks of this place � from small cottages with vinyl siding to windowless churches marked by hand painted signs. Johansson also situates each scene precisely in time and space. Over one hundred photographs dated to April 2010 are labeled as to the particular street name or intersection where they were shot and include some sites photographed repeatedly from multiple points of view. There is a compelling push-pull between the specifics of this place and a generalized portrait of a worn-down, small American town. This reminds me of the documentary film, "Los Angeles Plays Itself" which describes how the L.A. cityscape has stood in for all manner of other places in movies filmed there. The specificity of its landmark buildings and vistas are no obstacle for an audience largely from somewhere else and primed to see a story first, projecting its fiction back onto the chosen setting.
Pontiac, by Gerry Johansson. Published by Mack, 2011.

Pontiac, by Gerry Johansson. Published by Mack, 2011.

The narrative potential of Johansson's photographs of Pontiac is slow to emerge and somewhat filmic in its nature. The book's reproductions are small for a monograph, and call for a measured pace in their size and quiet content. Pontiac sometimes feels like a film that lingers on a static image, a disconcerting stance full of the anticipation of movement or action. The trees that appear throughout are major characters, as anthropomorphized sentries and intruders as well as more passive markers of regimented order or gradual neglect. The banal meets the slightly strange where bare flag polls on an abandoned shopping mall roof look like armaments that failed to ward off its closing, but now fortify a cavernous bunker for the few who remain. A playground rocket toy and parking lot lights and wooden crosses feel like beacons or antennae to somewhere else. Pontiac is a worth a careful look, for what it says about stasis and summary and the potential of such places to reveal something new to come. —Karen Jenkins

purchase book
Karen Jenkins earned a Master's degree in Art History, specializing in the History of Photography from the University of Arizona. She has held curatorial positions at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, AZ and the Demuth Museum in Lancaster, PA. Most recently she helped to debut a new arts project, Art in the Open Philadelphia, that challenges contemporary artists to reimagine the tradition of creating works of art en plein air for the 21st century.
comments
No one has commented on this review yet, be the first to add a comment.
ADD A COMMENT


NOTE: Comments will not appear until they have been approved by our editors. Read more about our policy regarding comments.

One of our chief goals with photo-eye Magazine is to create a space where intelligent dialog about photography books can flourish. As such, we are excited about engaging directly with our readers and the larger online photo-community through interactive content such as these article comments. However, to best acheive an interesting, ongoing discourse, all comments will be published only after they have been vetted by the editors.

We will not edit anything that is posted, nor reject any comment because we disagree with it, we simply reserve the right to reject comments that we feel do not make a contribution or are designed to offend. All we ask is that comments are thoughtful and substantive.

Thank you.
* indicates a required field

Your Name/Pseudonym: *
please enter a name

Your Email: *
please enter an valid email addressplease enter an email address
This is for contact / verification only, your email will not be displayed or given out under any circumstances.

Your website:
must be a vaild URL (ex. http://www.yourwebsite.com)

Your Comment: *

please enter a comment

To help prevent auto-spamming
Please enter the text and/or numbers below, in order, left to right:
enter text from the image below



← Return to the Magazine front page
← Return to reviews
© photo-eye Magazine. This article is printed from photo-eye Magazine (http://www.photoeye.com/magazine/) and is intended for personal use. Please contact us if you would like permission to reprint this article for commercial or educational use. Text © by the author, all images © their respective owners. All rights reserved.
© PHOTO-EYE, LLC, 2022. All Rights Reserved Copyrights-Trademarks Privacy Policy Returns Policy Staff/Hours/Location 505.988.5152 info@photoeye.com