Sidewalk


  • Photographer
    Gil Lavi
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Company/Studios
    Gil Lavi
  • Date of Photograph
    2009-2013

Sidewalk is the culmination of work since I moved to the USA from Israel 2 years ago. The work was originated in a conversation about extremes in America which take place in 2008 and inspired by the works of Alec Soth, William Eggleston, Joel Sternfeld and Katy Grannan. I decided to transform the country’s sidewalks into a visual diary of contemporary America. Through these images I looked at American symbols, consumption culture, relationships to firearms, the visuality of generic places, subcultures, and the the cliche of the American spirit.

Story

In 2008 I had a surprising conversation. The guy next to me at the bar was excited to hear that I come from another country. He even described me his own:

“We are a bunch of random people without any bond,” he said.

I looked at him very skeptically. It’s not what I knew of the United States. But he kept on, saying that, “In the end this country will break into pieces, made of its different extremes”.

Influenced by the works of Alec Soth, William Eggleston, Joel Sternfeld and Katy Grannan, after moving to live in the USA, I decided to look at the different aspects that builds this nation and try to understand their textures using the sidewalk as a meeting point for every subject f society, both physically and metaphorically.

From the fairy in Cleveland trying to create magic to resuscitate the stock market, to a lesbian couple sharing a private moment in New York, to a 4th of July water fight celebration in Long Island, to a traveling Amish family in Sarasota, I used the sidewalk as a national stage of what seems at first glance to be cliche of suburban photography. I decided to be, just like my subject matter, radically conservative and radically liberal at the very same time, yet being able to contain all of that.

Following the idea that American society is a container, the project overlooks the assumption that America is here to stay in its current state, and questions the possibility for these different axes to continue to coexist side by side into the next decade, while using the sidewalk as a visual container for my narrative.

Sidewalk, which follows my travel to America as a story teller on one single plane or focal point through different states, depicting different contemporary issues such as American symbols, consumption culture, relationships to firearms, the visuality of generic places, subcultures, and the the cliche of the American spirit, while being used as a personal diary.

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