Mark Power’s new book is the latest in his ongoing series exploring America’s cultural and physical landscape. He talks to Peter Dench about his methods and motivations
For photographers, Britain has the coast. It’s been a lens lure for genres and generations. Between 1992 and 1996, British documentary photographer Mark Power embarked on a journey to photograph the 31 sea areas around the coasts of the British Isles in his book, The Shipping Forecast. It was a brilliant idea, executed beautifully, and it has gone on to sell over 10,000 copies.
Conversely, America has the lure of dry, wide-open space and any serious documentary photographer must consider adding their own visual contribution to exploring its cultural and physical landscape. Many foreign photographers have tried, and succeeded, including Robert Frank (The Americans), Paul Graham (A Shimmer of Possibility) and Vanessa Winship (She Dances on Jackson).
Mark first visited America in 1984. The seduction had begun decades earlier, as he sat watching the sweeping plains of Westerns beamed direct into his suburban home via fuzzy black and white TV programmes – Bonanza, The High Chaparral, The Virginian and chiefly, Casey Jones.
Mark is now up to the penultimate volume of his self-funded series, Good Morning, America, with each book dismantling the myth of America that built his childhood. Since 2012 he has been meandering the American states constructing a new challenging visual narrative of a country that has spanned Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Looking for America
Mark’s questioning of what he believed about America began in earnest when he travelled to photograph the country as part of the project, Postcards from America. It was an idea by a group from the Magnum Photos Agency that he joined as a Nominee in 2002 before becoming a full Member in 2007.
Driven more by curiosity than agenda, Postcards IV: Florida was made during October and November 2012 during two months surrounding the re-election of Obama. Mark’s colour images of billboards, snack bars, car lots and nude revues gave visual clues of what was to come. When Postcards from America came to an end, he realised it was filling a void in his life and what he was always meant to do.
To simplify his quest for photographing Good Morning, America (Volume IV) he opened his mind and kept his options open. ‘I left the United States as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the country’s first cases of Covid-19,’ he says. ‘That was in February 2020 and not long afterwards we published Good Morning, America (Volume III), which obliquely referred to the events as they unfolded, albeit from a distance.
‘Almost two years passed before I was able to take my f
