11.13.2007

dream america





I photographed the UMFA's Warhol exhibit a few weeks ago, and this quote was hanging on the wall...

"Everybody has their own America, and then they have pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can't see. When I was little, I never left Pennsylvania, and I used to have fantasies about things that I thought were happening in the Midwest, or down South, or in Texas, that I felt I was missing out on. But you can only live life in one place at a time. And your own life while it's happening to you never has any atmosphere until it's a memory. So the fantasy corners of America seem to atmospheric because you've pieced them together from scenes in movies and nusic and lines from books. And you live in your dream America that you've custom-made from art and schmaltz and emotions just as much as you live in your real one." - Warhol, America, 1985