Photographs of culturally significant spaces, icons and rituals of North American culture. I have scanned in sample work prints from four of the more recent projects: A collection of photographs of the sites of the Manhattan Project as they now exist; a collection of images of the transformations of Levittown, Long Island, as it has moved from the best-known of the postwar "instant" bedroom suburban communities, to become just an everyday community; the social rituals surrounding upper-class "charity balls" and the like, made under the auspices of the Focus/Infinity Fund, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Chicago Historical Society during the late '80s; and pictures of Japan.
Pictures made as part of a book-length study of the American freeway system as a cultural system. Color photographs are digital in origin; black-and-white were made with an 8x10 camera.
These pictures were made at the three principal sites of the Manhattan Project: Hanford, Washington, site of the plutonium production facilities, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, site of the uranium production plants, and Los Alamos, New Mexico, where theoretical work and assembly were centered.
Pictures made of the borderlands of Tijuana/San Ysidro, while waiting with a mixed group of Guatemalans and Mexicans to cross illegally into the United States, 1992
Pictures made of rituals and events in suburbs of major cities in the United States, 1976-1996
The small-footprint, concrete-slab, mass-produced "Cape Cod" that William Levitt began to produce in the years immediately after the end of World War II changed not just the landscape of Long Island, New York, but much of postwar America. The uniformity of housing lasted only a few years, however. Quickly, residents began to expand, modify, modernize and historicize their houses. Pictures of some of the results.
Work done at Society Balls in the late '80s.
Probably my longest-running project is a study of the interactions between American culture and the American landscape. Pictures from 1976 to 1996, changing as often as I can scan in new work prints.
"Street Work" in Japan, primarily in Tokyo but also in Sendai and Matsushima, made in the Spring of 1995
If you have comments or suggestions, email me at pbhales@uic.edu