I'm One Of Those Americans - David McGowan

© David McGowan

My good friend David McGowan has been working on a very personal photo essay since last summer. He's been documenting garage sale culture in West Michigan as the economy continues to decline and people reevaluate what they truly need and what has to be sold. What's surprising is that as bad as things seemed only six months ago, the bad news has only gotten worse and there isn't a whole lot of hope that things will improve. At least not for a while. People like to say that when the country gets a cold, Michigan gets pneumonia, and that certainly holds true these days. Things are bad in the rest of the country and even worse in Michigan.

I'm One Of Those Americans is respectful and honest and taps into our collective anxiety and resignation. What is frightening is that in this story, I fear we're only at Chapter One and that the rest of the story is going to be a whole lot worse.

50 States

Stuart Pilkington has an ambitious new project that he's curating called the 50 States Project.

"Each photographer lives in one of the 50 States and during the year long project each photographer will represent the State where they live. Every two months each photographer will be sent an assignment by e-mail, they then have two months to produce one image in response. The images must represent both their style and the State in which they live."

Lots of familiar names on the list of photographers and some unfamiliar names as well. I'm really looking forward to watching this as it develops.

Maury Gortemiller, Georgia.

Mark Brautigam, Wisconsin.