Photographer snaps America's past in present day

By Staff
|
Google Oneindia News

LOS ANGELES, June 30 (Reuters) Photographer Greta Pratt knew she had hit the jackpot when the nine Abraham Lincolns sat down on the wood fence outside the 16th president's old Kentucky home.

Nine unsmiling, bearded Lincoln impersonators, with black stovepipe hats, starched white shirts, black ties and long, black frock coats arguing over which one was the most authentic -- you can't ask for anything more in Pratt's world.

Unless, of course, it's the cleaning lady pushing her vacuum cleaner past the concrete teepees at the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, Arizona, or tourists downing fries and Cokes at the picnic tables nestled among rockets at the Kennedy Space Center.

Or it might be boys in baseball caps begging General George Custer for his autograph, perhaps before he rides off to his doom in a re-enactment of the battle at Little Big Horn.

Pratt's photographic universe is actually an intersection -- the place where the American past slams into the American present.

And it is on full display in her new book of photos called ''Using History''.

In the book, three generations of prosperous white males celebrate Thanksgiving dinner at the Rainbow Room in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center wearing Brooks Brothers suits, shirts and ties, all capped by little Indian headdresses. The dinner cost 120 dollar a person, headdresses included.

A few pages later a green-tinted Lady Liberty eats popcorn in the bleachers at Madison Square Garden. She is Jennifer Stewart, who once won a Statue of Liberty look-alike contest and started dressing as the statue and even went to Japan with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Pratt often uses clever juxtapositions of photos to tell her tale of how Americans incorporate their country's past to explain their attitudes to the present.

RACIAL OVERTONES For example, in one photo a black woman lectures an all-black audience on history in front of a statue of a hooded Ku Klux Klansman at the Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore.

And in the photo directly opposite, young white boys in 19th century garb march in an ''Arrival of the Whites'' parade in Deadwood, South Dakota.

MORE REUTERS SRS BST0942

For Daily Alerts
Get Instant News Updates
Enable
x
Notification Settings X
Time Settings
Done
Clear Notification X
Do you want to clear all the notifications from your inbox?
Settings X
X