PrintOctober 4, 2008
American Gothic Redux
Frank, Jona. Right: Portraits from the Evangelical Ivy League(San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2008)Photographer Jona Frank recently attempted to capture life at the Evangelical Christian Patrick Henry College (PHC). But the resulting book is not, as the press release says, "an in depth portrait" of the school as much as it is another ho-hum illustration, at a cost of $35.00, of how the Left in this country perceives both homeschoolers and Evangelical Christians. Simply put, Ms. Franks uses her camera and staging to portray the students at PHC as tense, artificial, pasteboard figures that float like detached ghosts over the landscape.In Right: Portraits from the Evangelical Ivy League, what is billed as a "non-partisan" portrait of PHC students ends up being a record of one photographer's inability to suspend partisanship. Instead of "[humanizing] the school, its student body, and their families," as the press release announces, the reader is...(Read Full Article)
