America Through the Eyes of a British Photographer

Beginning this Friday, students in the MA Photography course at the London College of Communication will be exhibiting their final projects. There was no specific brief, but the title chosen for the show—"In the Forest of Things"—is inspired by a quote from journalist Ryszard Kapuściński, in which he states that, to tell authentic stories, one must "[penetrate them] as deeply as possible." We spoke to a few of the photography students about their chosen case studies and will be running one interview a day in the run-up to the opening of the show.

Chris Bethell's MA Photography project is based on an elaborate lie. As a child, Chris—who was born in Stockport to an American mother and English father—fabricated his family history. Like most kids in his class, Chris would exaggerate the tidbits he'd picked up from his parents, to the point where his friends all believed he'd been born in Boston, like his mother, and identified as American, even though he had never actually visited the country.

Chris shared flamboyant stories of an American grandfather, Joey O'Donnell, who got caught up in a glamorous jazz career, to mask the reality that this man was actually a complete mystery to Chris's family. Chris's project, titled "The Duke of Earl," is the name of the Gene Chandler song that his grandfather used to woo his grandmother when they were courting. Titling his project this way was a mission of sorts—to find out the truth about his family and finally forge a sense of personal identity.

Chris isn't often this nostalgic. In fact, he's usually found pointing his camera at rioters or angry police, often for VICE. However, this journey was one he'd wanted to make for years. So, last summer, he and his photographer girlfriend Bekky Lonsdale flew to the east coast of America and made their way back across the country documenting their surroundings in the process.

I had a chat with him about the project, hoping to learn whether or not he'd finally managed to find himself.

VICE: I get the sense you've tried to mirror a sense of your romantic and exaggerated memories in your photography. Is that right?
Chris Bethell: Absolutely. The photographs are an expression of the tension between the America I believed in, the America I discovered, and the America my grandfather experienced. None of them are really about the people within the photographs, but are more about what each one expresses, whether that be notions of love, redemption, excess, or the American Dream. They act more as dreams rather than a document of real life.

Do you think your search for personal identity could have been possible without a camera? Could you not have just traveled and had the same experiences?
I would have struggled. Photography is my main motivation for doing anything—I'm not sure I would have had the energy otherwise. A cliché that is often thrown around by photographers is that having a camera is like having a window into other people's lives, and it's true. Maybe less so in England, where we're suspicious of surveillance and everyone in general, but in America having a camera led to people inviting us into their homes, telling us their life stories and even giving us gifts.

One amazing family we met in New York State told us how one of their favorite hobbies was to check freshly-plowed fields for Native American arrowheads. They then gifted us with three, possibly from the 1700s. I instantly worried about getting them back through customs.

Did you manage to solve the mystery of your grandfather?
Well, the trip had a pretty cinematic climax. Having driven over 7,000 miles, east to west, we reached Clarkston—the small town Joey lived out his last days in. The idea was to pick up some flowers and head to his grave; the logical conclusion of the journey. Except this didn't quite go as planned.

To begin with we couldn't find Joey's grave. The headstone was completely overgrown, so it wasn't until a worker from the cemetery helped us that we found it. After digging for a while, metal began to shine through. Clawing back fragments of mud and grass, I gradually revealed my grandfather's name. We'd come to the other side of the world to literally dig up the past—as bad as the pun is.

What's the most important photograph to you out of the whole project?
It's not one of my photographs, but rather the family photographs I have incorporated into the work. These images are of my grandfather. All of my life I have treated him as a hero—a mysterious figure who embodied everything I understood about my American identity. I somehow created an elaborate fiction around his life that involved him playing in a successful jazz band, touring the country, and eventually drinking himself to death in Vegas.

Did you find out if any of that is actually true?
It was only a few years ago that I sat down with my grandmother and began to discover the truth. Suddenly he was no longer this two-dimensional character, but a real person with all the complexities that go along with that. Some elements turned out to be true—he sang in a band during his teenage years, and he had traveled around America and unfortunately, was afflicted with an addiction to alcohol. Before I started working on this, his death had been a mystery to my family. I applied for his death certificate from Washington State, which confirmed that he had died from cirrhosis of the liver. My fiction and the real had been inexplicably interwoven.

Do you have any interesting stories from your trip which you didn't capture on camera?
Well, we're pretty sure that we stayed in a motel that secretly filmed us. While driving across the central states, we pulled up in a sleepy town to what looked like just another motel. The only room they had available was a suite with a jacuzzi for $180. We politely declined, as our budget was $50 a night, and headed for the door. The owner stopped us, though, and reduced the room to $70 if I promised to treat Bekky to a bottle of wine. We checked in and headed to the shop, but neither of us felt much like drinking, so we just went back and cooked noodles. The next morning the owner came running over—"You never treated her to that bottle of wine, did you?"

So, have you found yourself?
I still don't really have a clue who I am, exactly. Identity is a constantly shifting thing that is pretty hard to nail down. Although, I've since learned that shaping myself to the expectations I have of a nation I'd never visited is a strange thing to do.

Thanks, Chris.

See more photos from Chris' project, as well as the final projects from other photographers in his course, at the LCC MA show, open from 10 AM to 5 PM, Monday to Saturday, from January 15 to 23, at the London College of Communication.