Seeing America: From Kennedy to Obama

Seamus Murphy - Special to GlobalPost January 14, 2009 08:43 ET

For Which it Stands: Worldview

From "The Quiet American" to rendition, an Irish photographer's lens on America

By Seamus Murphy - Special to GlobalPost
Published: January 8, 2009 17:59 ET
Updated: January 15, 2009 07:29 ET

DUBLIN — In June 1963 I saw John F. Kennedy in Dublin on his visit to Ireland.
 
I was sitting on my father's shoulders as we waited with hundreds of others, all waving little Stars and Stripes on Griffith Avenue, to catch a wave from his chariot en route to Dublin airport.
 
His hair looked red to me, all shining in the June Dublin sun. But was it really red? I can
still see it vividly, but maybe I was making this emperor more Irish.
 
It is a powerful memory and the fire lit that day has never been quite extinguished. The idea of America then, for a young Irish boy and for millions of others, promised an infinity of dreams. Years later I travelled around the United States with my camera, seeing things
through a different lens.
 
But these first memories, plus an addiction to watching "The Monkees," "Here's Lucy,"  "Get Smart" and old American flicks on that recent miracle —Irish TV — formed my earliest thoughts of America.
 
It seemed next door, but at the same time in another world.  America was like a friend that promised a welcome, a second chance. It was a long way away, yet most people had a relative who had moved there, and everyone felt some connection. Significantly, it was a dazzling alternative to the stuffy and suspicious Brits in the other direction.
 
Months later, seeing my mother in tears for the first time after word came of Kennedy's murder, I was overwhelmed by something I did not comprehend. My father simply swore never to visit America."Didn't they kill Kennedy?" he would say, and he never did.
 
America is capable of shock as well as awe.
 
Everything didn't die with Jack Kennedy, no human being is a saint and truth isn't served well by headlines. But along with the fate of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, something big and good, call it generosity, seemed to have been sucked out of the message America was
projecting. And latterly, once what might have been pernicious Cold-War interference in Vietnam have visibly become mindless invasion and domination in Iraq.
 
My view of America is a journey from "The Quiet American" to rendition.
 
Click here to go to the For Which It Stands Complete Guide
 
I have spent a good deal of the past eight years photographing in places where America is supposed to be promoting democracy and stability: Afghanistan, Iraq,Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Israel, Kenya, Somalia.
 
This has been a campaign that has reached across the globe and made all our lives more fragile. It has cost many thousands of lives and created prisoners and victims of torture that will feed extremists and enemy armies for generations to come. The act of rendition, snatching terrorism suspects off the streets to take them to secret prisons, seems impossible to imagine of the America I thought I knew.
 
The crude "war on terror" has had an impact already deeply felt in London, Madrid and recently in Mumbai. In Iraq, above all,  the policy was so unsophisticated and the mistakes so vast that it seems the damage will live on for generations, pleasing only Jihadis in their murky, viral world and the neocons in their own self-fulfilling prophecies.
 
Whether it was America's bloody vengeance, a willful dishonesty in the grab for power and money or a staggering ineptitude, who can really say? But it's been a hell of a failure, and under President Bush it often felt we — all of us out here in the world who are not American — are all the enemy.
 
But still there are few of us who don't want to look to the U.S. for hope. Even when it is hardest to see.
 
To try to find light I went into the place often aligned with America's darkest moment. I went to Dallas in November to photograph the U.S. Presidential election night.
 
It was a deliberate choice and without morbid motives. Signs were that Obama could do the extraordinary and in one giant step Americans would do the right thing and atone. Not for the
sins of history but at least to begin to address the place that America has lodged itself in the past eight years.
 
If Dallas 1963 was where something ended, it would also be the place I saw the chance of a new beginning.
 
 

 

Comments:

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Posted by Asilomar on January 13, 2009 21:02 ET

A wonderful slideshow - keep it up!

Posted by Kathleen Coleman on January 15, 2009 10:29 ET

I was truly touched by your wonderful slideshow. As an older American who grew up in a patriotic home and who has loved this country dearly, I have been so troubled by what our country seems to have become under the Bush administration--your pictures have given my feelings a place to reside and know that my perception was the right one. Looking forward to a new administration and new slideshows from a great photographer. Keep up the good work!

Posted by Anne on January 15, 2009 11:53 ET

I'm going to LOVE GlobalPost - we need this type of reporting and insight. You're capturing the spirit behind the headlines.

Posted by Newsjunkie on January 16, 2009 13:23 ET

You're right: The Cheney/Bush administration has been a hell of a failure for all the reasons you list. I would add these presidential traits that were obvious throughout his terms: ignorance; incuriosity; anti-intellictualism; and disdain for the U. S. Constitution. As refreshing and promising as Barack Obama is, the question is whether the U. S. can recover from an administration that wrecked our credibility worldwide.

Posted by terry.94 on January 17, 2009 07:15 ET

Enjoyed the slide show, would have liked captions with a little info of what they were of or what you wanted to capture.

Posted by d1v1d on March 25, 2009 02:39 ET

Thank you for the slides - they are very moving! You can't always see your own wounds - someone else needs to observe and reflect on them.

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