Danny Wilcox Frazier February 18, 2009
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in United States.Tags: United States
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Rabbit hunters skin the day’s kill, Washington County, Iowa. 2003
Danny Wilcox Frazier (b.1971, USA) is a documentary photographer based in the Midwest. Over the past four years, Frazier has photographed people struggling to survive the economic shift that has devastated rural communities across his home state of Iowa. Frazier’s clients include: Time, Life, Newsweek, Mother Jones Magazine, Forbes,and People. He has won prizes from Pictures of the Year International, the National Press Photographer’s Association and Society of Professional Journalists, as well as multiple foreign and domestic grants and fellowships. Frazier’s foreign assignments have taken him to Afghanistan, India, Cuba, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Kosovo and Mexico. Frazier has a master’s degree from the University of Iowa, where he taught photojournalism during his graduate studies. His book Driftless: Photographs from Iowa was published by Duke University Press in 2007.
About the Photograph:
“The feeling of openness that so defines the Midwest’s rural landscape is being replaced by one of emptiness,” Frazier says. “As the economies of rural communities across America continue to fail, abandonment is becoming commonplace; these photographs document the human effect of this economic shift. What I hope they do is force people to think about the decline of these rural places and start thinking of solutions. And I think the biggest solution is immigration.”
Frazier’s use of portraiture and landscape as a stark realization to modern economic times is interesting. However, I believe his photo above is effective in this manner. The stark contrast and grain of this particular photograph gives a sense of nostalgia. The composition seems a bit contradictory to me however. The photo is full of action and I do not really see the emptiness he is trying to express here.