I heard a week ago or so that California artist Doug Rickard had died last November 30th at the age of the age of 53. My fear, and speculation, is he may have taken his own life, but I don’t know that for sure. He was relatively young, there has been no cause of death given, and in reading his bio information he made no secret that he had struggled with some things in life. I only mention this for anyone else out there who might be hurting and reads this post. I know of a couple people who have their lives in the last couple years, we are living in some ugly times right now but there should always hope, and I encourage anyone who might be struggling to tell someone, to ask for help.
Rickard became known in the art world for his series A New American Picture which he began in 2008. Using a Nikon D40 on a tripod, Rickard projected Google Street View images on to a large screen in his office then photographed them. Over a three-year period, he made 10,000 to 15,000 exposures which he eventually edited down to 80 for the final product. Aperture published the monograph of this work in 2012.
If I remember correctly, I first became aware of A New American Picture when I heard Rickard speak at the Medium Festival in 2014. To be completely honest I didn’t like the images aesthetically and I still don’t. In theory, his goal of documenting the areas of our country where opportunities to chase the American Dream are non-existent and impossible to achieve is a fantastic subject to be explored and documented. I just didn’t like his approach, sitting in a safe office using the images captured by some poor Google driver who had to drive through some of the roughest cities in the country to capture those images. Those drivers were the ones putting their asses on the line to get the images. I can only imagine how many rocks and bottles (or worse) have been hurled at those drivers in those areas. Another thing that bothered me was Rickard’s use of a low-end digital camera. Not that the 6.1 MP Nikon D40 was a bad camera for what it was, there were just better models out by then and he was printing 21” x 33”. I remember seeing a video of him working on the project and I was surprised he had two assistants helping him for something so simple. I am old school, the process of photographing is actually going to those places myself to witness firsthand, to experience the situation then capture the images to accurately document my subject.
But with all that said above, I am thankful for Doug Rickard’s work. I am happy the photography world accepted his unique approach and that so many people have seen his images. His body of work is very important. I want diversity in images and new approaches to the medium. I think Photography has had a habit of following trends, where a certain image style becomes popular, and that style dominates what is being shown. The Internet has obviously impacted that, but I still see the trends in the galleries. I wonder at times if my own work isn’t paying the price for past trends. We have all seen the 1920-1970’s images from masters of documentary photography so much over the years that I think some recent documentary work gets ignored or discounted because gallerists and curators are looking for new product to share. From a business perspective it makes perfect sense.
While researching for this post I learned more about Doug Rickard, and I developed a greater appreciation for him. I discovered Rickard was influenced by some of the photobooks that I love: American Photographs by Walker Evans, The Americans by Robert Frank, and Uncommon Places by Steven Shore. He had a strong knowledge of the history of the medium and he seemed to respect those who came before him. I also discovered the primary reason for using Google Street View was because he had a demanding job in the software industry and couldn’t take enough time to travel to all the places he wanted to document, he realized Google Street View allowed him to explore more places than he ever could have traveled to. In watching interviews of him online for this post I reevaluated my opinion and I understand better now that image quality didn’t matter to Rickard, in fact the poorer resolution was a desired look for his images. I also discovered Rickard’s influential website American Suburb X. Seeing the content on the site, it was immediately apparent that Rickard had an outstanding understanding of the documentary photography world, showcasing many of my favorite image makers. Looking at the site I think it may have been impacted by his passing and appears there wasn’t much activity on it over the last year which is unfortunate because much of the content on the site is outstanding.
I encourage you to follow some of the links in the post to get a better understanding of Doug Rickard’s work and its importance to the medium of Photography.