I'd not read such a moving book in years. This very frank account of modern poverty and discrimination in the United States, was not only an eye opener, but a life changer. Here was a man, a Dane, Jacob Holdt, who had done all the things I'd dreamed of as a youth. He'd spent some six years on the road, a true vagabond, his only income from the occasional donation of blood, relying otherwise on the gifts of others - and what a gift that was.
One of them was a camera, and he went on to photograph almost rabidly, ultimately producing the slide show and book now advertised on his site. But American Pictures is not just a picture show, indeed the text is even more moving than the images. Jacob was a true hitch-hiker:
- "The most fantastic lottery I can think of is hitch-hiking. There is a prize every time. Every single person can teach you something. I have never said no to a ride - even if there were pistols lying on the front seat, or four sinister-looking men wearing sunglasses in the car. Every person is like a window through which the larger society can be glimpsed."
It brings him into contact with all walks of society. In a culture as motorised as the United States, everyone drives, the rich, the poor, the white, the black, men, women, young, old, wise, weary ... the only thing that characterises drivers who stopped was their readiness to share.
But it's mostly the doors of the poor, the blacks, that are open to him. He's more selfless and giving than anyone I've ever met. On saying yes he writes: "The greatest freedom I know is to be able to say yes; the freedom to throw yourself into the arms of every single person you meet." and by compromising his own identity he is everyone's brother. He lives not only in the shanty towns and slums with America blacks, but in the haughty mansions of the elite, even some Kennedys cross his path.
His greatest woe is the endless racism, the extant slavery (and yes, he illustrates the reality of modern slavery acutely), and oppression in a country otherwise so open and hospitable. But he can't bring himself to blame anyone, not even the whites most forcibly enacting it, themselves slaves to their own ideological blinders. So rare it is to read such enlightened love of humanity, so boldly attacking the systems and not its enactors!
