Emptiness dominates Marianne Mueller's portrait of America. A response to her late friend and fellow Swiss photographer Robert Frank's seminal monograph, The Americans (1958), Mueller's photo essay brings together images from her trips to the United States between 2010 and 2017. In the spirit of Frank's work, Mueller's photos reveal the country's veneer of perfection and prosperity that it still portrays both to itself and to the world.While numerous people populate Frank's images, human life is almost entirely missing from Mueller's parking lots and vacant rooms. Two exceptions emphasize their absence: a bar patron-photographed at close range from behind- becomes more object than person as the camera focuses on their lilac blazer that echoes the hotel-room curtains on the previous page; and a bent arm that juts from another frame's edge becomes a ghostly appendage hovering in midair. More visible are traces made by those who have left these spaces: salt on a tablecloth, smudged handrails, semi-dusted surfaces, scratched linoleum. "Traveling across America, I had the feeling that, when you move, you can just take what you need and leave the rest," Mueller says. "You don't even close the door. You just disappear and look forward."
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