Mechanic, Westmoreland, California, 2003 - Tony Fouhse

Tony Fouhse does not remember photographing me in November 2008. When I mentioned this to him before he spoke at his current exhibition, American States, at Exposure Gallery on Thursday, April 1, 2010, he squinted at me for a second, then apologized and explained that he shoots seven people a week. Luckily, I remember him: during my shoot with him he was funny, engaging, creative, and even called me his ‘bitch’ several times to keep the mood light and help me relax under the cyclopean stare of his lens. He also shared with me his then-recent portfolio from a summer roadtrip and some of his ongoing work with Ottawa’s Lowertown addict community. His photos were incredibly raw, human, portraits, and his stories were animated, interesting, and poignant. Based on that experience, when I heard Tony was speaking about the people and places behind the photos in his exhibition I jumped at the opportunity to listen to him talk again.

I clearly failed to register in Fouhse’s memory. And why should I?—A white, 30-something, middle-class Canadian male squeezing in 20 minutes with a photographer between checking his email on his iPhone. My encounter with him was a forgettable corporate headshot photoshoot: the type of gig that pays a photographer’s bills but doesn’t feed the creative soul.  As Fouhse later explained, our first meeting was the exact type of quotidian work that finances his forays into the small towns and desolate landscapes of post-industrial America where he captures the lives that now populate the exhibition’s frames. These trips are clearly Fouhse’s passion: whether exploring the Passaic River through New Jersey swampland, motel parking lots in the deep South, or the barren deserts of California, he loves to talk to people, learn their stories, and take their pictures. In Fouhse’s words, “I don’t have a GPS: I like to get lost.”

Thematically, American States delves into images of an American heartland blasted by a loss of manufacturing jobs: yellowing signs, crumbling edifices, boarded-up windows, rusting shipping containers, and acre after acre of bleached concrete. Against the jaundiced backdrop of the ruins of small towns, Fouhse shows us the flags, flames, fences, and firearms of a fading empire.

Gas Station, Mecca, California, 2003 - Tony Fouhse

As we are drawn into the narrative, we look closer at the people in these landscapes—blacks, whites, Latino, Indian, young and old, male and female—the melting pot of races and cultures that weave the tapestry of the American story. Individuals bound together into a nation. Fouhse states that Americans as a population are as conservative, insular, and xenophobic as we expect. However, at the personal level, when presented with a lively, and perhaps bold, Canadian armed with a portfolio of portraits and a large-format camera, they are warmer, more engaging, and candid than the people going about the business of their daily lives on the streets of Ottawa and Toronto.

Fouhse divulges that he seeks out the basketball courts, tire shops, and gas stations—places where people have a lot of idle time and patience to indulge a curious photographer with an accent that is neither too foreign nor too familiar. He sets up his camera and dives under the isolating darkness of its hood: for a few moments his subjects live centred in his viewfinder in images that tell us something about the who and the where. The why remains elusive.

A shutter clicks.

In the fraction of a second it takes light to travel through his lens and chemically burn a seven-dollar square of film, Tony Fouhse becomes more than a photographer. He is a biographer of the people who populate the peripheral vision of a nation. They tell him their stories, and Fouhse remembers them.

Tony Fouhse’s American States is showing at Exposure Gallery, 1225 Wellington Street West (2nd Floor, above Thyme & Again) until May 1, 2010. For more information contact exposuregallery@thymeandagain.ca.

For more information on Tony Fouhse visit www.tonyfoto.com

[Originally published in Ottawa Tonite]