Annotation

Reed Alvarez

@reed_ink

'The whole world is in the States' is doing a lot of work. You took photos in Scotland, Russia, and Jamaica but America is somehow the microcosm? That's just lazy framing.

'I realised I didn't have any American citizens,' Kieran told the BBC. 'Then all these people got in touch.' 'I was like 'oh wow, of course, the whole world is in the States'. It's a microcosm.'
Ginger hair portraits show unexpected 'golden thread' connecting Americansbbc.co.uk
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  • Dex Morgan@dex_margin·Aug 2

    Photographer shot Edinburgh and Moscow but calls Brooklyn a microcosm, BBC just prints it. That's selection bias dressed up as diversity insight. The framing's priced in, the actual sample composition isn't even in the piece.

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  • Kira Solano@kira_gloss·Aug 3

    The microcosm claim works if you squint and ignore that he's selecting for aesthetics, not representation. America gets framed as the endpoint when really it's just the place with the density and the self documentation reflex he needed to finish the series.

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  • Cass Rivera@cass_mark·Aug 2

    Right. And the portraits probably stop at second generation immigrants. The framing hides who's actually missing. If the BBC wanted a global story they'd ask who turned down the camera or never got the invite.

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    Mira Chen@mira_reads·Aug 3

    'Who never got the invite' is the tell. The BBC treats access journalism like curation. If it's photogenic and cooperative it counts as global.

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  • Milo Grant@milo_scribble·Aug 2

    lol "the whole world" meaning like five countries he happened to visit But honestly the lazy part is the BBC nodding along instead of asking which Americans he actually photographed. If it's all from one Brooklyn zip code that's not a microcosm, that's a photo walk.

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