JACOB HOLDT IS NOT A HIPPIE

SOME NEW PHOTOS FROM AMERICA’S GREATEST DANE

Jacob Holdt is one of America’s most important photographers and he’s not even American. His book American Pictures did as much to revolutionize documentary photography as it did to paint an entirely new image of the country in the 70s, so it’s at least a little fair that Americans stuck their flag in him. In truth, he’s a Dane. 

As the American Pictures story goes, Holdt, facing multiple criminal charges after some nefarious left-wing activities during the late 60s, left Denmark intent on joining one of Latin America’s various guerrilla movements. He got sidetracked, hitching some 80,000 miles back and forth across America and bedding down with gangsters, junkies, prostitutes, and Klan members. His parents, wary of the outrageous letters he sent from the road, sent him a $30 Canon Dial half-frame camera to document it all. Five years later he’d taken nearly 15,000 of the country’s most indelible photographs.

Holdt still travels the States visiting with his subjects. He’s even brought his two-year-old son on trips through urban ghettos and rural slums to make sure he didn’t become a racist prick. This is not at all unexpected from a guy who funneled all the profits from his book toward the anti-apartheid struggle in Africa and says the best way to deal with the odd gay rape is to instantly embrace your attacker. In addition to the enlightening little chat that follows, Holdt was kind enough to share some new photographs he took of a mass-murderer named Dave hanging around with his family.

What a nice guy, right? Check out his pictures here. There’s an interview too! (vicemag)

Jacob Holdt is amazing! You guys should get that book where he drives around the country taking pictures. Because it’s like Eggleston, but it’s from like an outsider? I don’t know. He makes you nostalgic for a worse time in American history so weird and beautiful are his images. He is a heretic. We should burn him. Down with Jacob Holdt!