CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/29/2022

Whatever we are, Arthur Grace captured it in 'America 101’

Featured image, titled “Worcester, Massachusetts, 1976,” is from America 101 photojournalist Arthur Grace’s classic 1970s document of American civilization. Brett Abbott writes, “Ultimately, Grace’s study represents the yin and yang of America, depicting a union held together by its diversity and continual negotiation between opposing forces. In Grace’s America, the ordinary meets the absurd, veneration and irreverence comingle in unexpected and delightfully humorous ways, a lighthearted joie de vivre soothes a violent vein, and the sanctity of the individual competes with our continual drive toward collective direction. Indeed, what is perhaps so prescient about Grace’s condensation of the past is how much it resembles the basic structure of our present. … Grace reminds us that the greatest quirk of our cultural DNA is that, despite our adherence to the past, we still have the brash capacity and tried aptitude for evolution.”