Michael Mergen
With 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I sough to explore and document the American landscape using the constant of the country’s most famous address – the White House. Using this address as a constant, I made straightforward images of everyday America. What followed is a vernacular, kaleidoscopic view of this country: lower and middle class homes of all sorts, mundane structures of a waste water treatment plant, and bland, nameless brick and cinderblock buildings. And it is this contrast to the regal white columns of the White House, its manicured lawn and historical context that makes these buildings so interesting, the familiar humdrum of the American landscape, that simple happenstance of sharing an address with the most significant of all.
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