The years in which the spotlight was on two opposing blocks, the American one on the one hand and the Eastern one under Soviet influence on the other were among the most significant in contemporary history. The divided world has been documented by painting, sculpture, architecture and photography, never left out by music and literature. The French photographer Jean-Piere Laffont he is among those who have tried to speak through his art of the years of transformation of America that he has experienced since 1965 when he arrived in New York. Since then, for over thirty years he has traveled the length and breadth of the United States in an attempt to describe its soul.
The Turbulent America exhibition arises from a careful and profound research of the archive of the French photographer's historical shots, on display at the Candiani Cultural Center in Mestre.
Jean-Pierre Laffont has been front row at some of the defining moments in American history and through his eyes offers “a multifaceted analysis of what he saw happening between the 60s and 80s”, explains Harold Evans in the preface of the book, Photographer's Paradise. Turbulent America 1960 – 1990. "His tireless eye is drawn not so much to the ballets of Washington politics as to the social significance of protests in big cities and stoicism in rural areas," he continues.
From the analysis of his shots, the photographer noticed how each of them seemed to portray “alone great confusion, riots, demonstrations, disintegration, collapses and conflicts. But, taken as a whole they show the chaotic and, at times, painful birth of twenty-first century America: they do what photographs do best: they freeze decisive moments in time for future analysis. These images are a personal and historical portrait of a country that I have always observed critically, but with deep affection and for which I feel immense gratitude” as he himself explained.
Jean-Pierre Laffont's photographs rarely show the events of the day's news, rather they focus on the motivations behind them: its intent is to explain the causes and effects of that news. He was able to capture the more personal aspects of the people he photographed. He has focused the lens on misfits, indigents, rebels. He focused on the explosion of the sexual revolution, the civil rights movement and the consequences of restrictions on free speech.
PICTURES
A child's hand grips a gun, an adult hand gripping around it to help stabilize and guide the heavy weapon. The year is 1981, when a camp was established in Texas to teach children the use of firearms, and the photographer is Jean-Pierre Laffont – a founding member of the photographic agencies Gamma and Sygma.
Other photographs: a close-up of Martin Luther King at a peace rally in 1967 with the United Nations building reflected in his eyes and again a 1984 image of the twin towers next to the Statue of Liberty, the latter wrapped in scaffolding during a facelift.
Turbulent America is a startling portrait of the blatant speed of American life, its traumatic divisions, its heady ambitions, its heroes and heroines, and its endless parade of loser and weirdos. Laffont's lens showed the audience major political issues as they emerged, faded or degenerated.
