Magnum Editions Poster: Touchet, Washington. 2019. Mark Power

Description

Born in Harpenden, England in 1959, as a child Power came across a home-made enlarger his father had constructed out of a camera lens, a light bulb and an upturned flower pot. He has said that while he developed an interest in photography at that young age, he later went on to study life-drawing and painting at art college in Brighton.

In 2012, Power commenced his most ambitious project yet, a ten-year study of the United States. Having devoured American media – particularly television – as a child, he had always wanted to explore the country from behind his camera, and in Good Morning, America has finally realised that dream. His travels have taken him from Miami to Milwaukee, New York to North Carolina, from coast to coast, the Rust Belt to the Deep South.

This photograph, taken in 2019, is of a snow-strewn gas station in Touchet, a tiny settlement in the south of Washington state. Included in his second book from his travels around the US, Good Morning, America (Volume Two), it is typical of some of the other work from the series – a quintessentially American scene, with vivid splashes of colour offset by a distinct lack of colour in the rest of the frame.