United We Fall is a photographic series shot by Robert Leslie documenting his journey of over 7,000 km of American landscape in the hopeful aftermath of Barrack Obama’s Inauguration in January, 2009. The series is a collection of 4,000 photographic records documenting a multitude of geographic, socio-economic and cultural landscapes through the seven states where Leslie has randomly chosen to record a glimpse of American contemporary life and history. The work is an attempt to capture a precise and realistic typography of the living communities and vanishing social structures and customs, which we see deteriorating before our eyes in a nascent American 21st century.
Leslie’s journey starts with the live transmission of the Barack Obama Inuaguration at the Miami Opera House earlier this year and takes us through Florida, into the Panhandle, across Texas, New Mexico, Nevada and ending in Long Beach, California. The imagery of hope and optimism initially depicted in Leslie’s study is slowly replaced by scenes of desolation and despair, vacant landscapes and deserted homes. As the body of work unfolds, the viewer is confronted with the startling absence of human presence from the panoramic narrative of contemporary America. Leslie presents us with a poignant testimony of a deeply disillusioned nation seeking recovery from a string of political, environmental and economic traumas.
An enduring preoccupation in Leslie’s work is finding a visual equivalent to evoke the richness of real experience where the wealth of details in space offers endless, narrative possibilities over time. In United We Fall, he explores and challenges the preconceived ideals we have cultivated of the American culture particularly with regard to materialism and consumerism. The medium of photography is particularly empowering in this instance, allowing the recording and documentation of Leslie’s diaristic study. The camera captures the physicality of a moment, a space, an experience, which once existed to be fleetingly witnessed by us all but is now gone forever.
Myriam Blundell
Curator
