Here is one definition: A large number of people walking or in vehicles, all going in the same direction, usually as part of a public celebration of something. By this measure, it would seem the parade is precisely what is absent from George Georgiou’s photographs, although it is implied.

If we take another definition – A series of people or things that appear one after the other – then these images, sequenced across pages or along the walls of an exhibition, certainly do form a parade of sorts. A parade of parade watchers, although what is being celebrated is not always clear.

Between January and November 2016, Georgiou photographed spectators lining the streets of big cities and small towns across North America, as they watched or waited for parades.

Sometimes they formed crowds; sometimes they were just a scattering of people. Fourteen different states, twenty-four cities, and twenty-six parades.

From the very first that he photographed, a Martin Luther King parade in Long Beach, California, the visual approach was simple and eloquent.

Standing on one side of the route, Georgiou would wait for a clear view to photograph a section of the group on the other. The New York Times saw some early examples, understood their compelling power, and immediately supported the project. This allowed Georgiou to make several extended trips from his home in England.

Georgiou would look at the overall compositions in front of him, at little arrangements of people within the frame, and at fleeting gestures that caught his eye. But as with all his work, he is wise enough to accept the generosity of photography, that it offers more than he can see.

Parades are in themselves little instances of community, but we should be wary of that word. These days, ‘community’, not unlike the word ‘parade’, tends to imply like-mindedness, the coming together around a cause or shared fate.

Nevertheless, the silent framing of a group portrait tends to produce an illusion of unity, as if the people in each frame, and the frames within this book, share the singular coherence of a picture that is taken in an instant and lasts forever.

Georgiou was making these photographs throughout the 2016 presidential campaigns. On November 8, Donald Trump was elected president, in the name of the Republican Party. Georgiou made his last parade photograph, in Brockton, Massachusetts on November 26.

Photographs are naturally still and mute but it is clear now that Georgiou made these images during a period of recent history that was anything but still and mute.

The political and ideological upheavals, the poisoning of public debate, and the turning of the United States against itself in its capitulation to crude populism, were loud and tumultuous.

Georgiou kept his feelings and opinions to himself.

He also kept his nerve, knowing that if his images were going to be able to stand, in their own moment and beyond, he needed to withhold judgment.

While he is the author of these photographs, their meaning is up to viewers. Up to us, and up to audiences to come.

The increasing visibility of us all, for ourselves and for others, encourages us to judge while cautioning us not to.

It may be tempting to jump to conclusions, but the relation of a person’s appearance to character, job, class, ideals, desires or political viewpoint is often so layered and nuanced as to be almost indecipherable.

And for all the talk of strong opinion and decisive difference in North
America right now, we ought not to forget the levels of confusion and bewilderment.

Even when a person is draped in a flag or political slogans, their wish to be emphatic may prompt us to wonder exactly where their conviction came from.

George Georgiou drove thirteen thousand miles in the making of this project.

No culture has embraced the automobile so completely as the United States. Its towns and cities are largely designed with car dependence in mind.

Look behind the standing people here and you will often see the cars they drove to get to the parades. While the car makes travel possible it also aids the separation of people from each other on a daily basis. It adds to the deep levels of loneliness and alienation that are now taken for granted.

Perhaps this makes the thoroughly pedestrian and social nature of a parade all the more poignant. Whatever they are for, American parades feel nostalgic, throwbacks to some long gone but not quite forgotten sense of belonging.

Americans Parade is a parade of Americans. One after the other, from one community to the next, building up a picture of Americans in the United States in 2016, the year Donald Trump was elected, a year when Americas division have never been more pronounced.

I have visited the United States several times over the years and outside of the biggest cities, I would see very little street life and have no reason to stop; I would only know of a place by it’s reputation, it was like the local community was invisible.

The idea for the work came about when I went to a Martin Luther King parade in a neighbourhood I had been to before. Unlike my first visit, when the streets were empty, the streets were suddenly alive, full of people, families, movement and a sea of sound, a complex community was suddenly visible.

In 2016, I decided to criss-cross the country looking for parades that covered many of the different American demographics. The NYT’s magazine liked the idea and supported me throughout, publishing the work on the weekend of Trump’s inauguration.

Throughout the year I visit 26 parades, in 24 cities across 14 states. From the very first parade, my visual approach was simple and deliberate. Moving alongside the parade I would follow the route, waiting for a clear view to photograph a section of the crowd on the other side.

I would look at the landscape and the overall composition, at groups that caught my attention, at fleeting moments, but I also embraced the generosity of the camera, it’s ability to record and freeze more than I could register. The crowd gives the photograph that element of chance, to create itself.

The details become important. A sea of faces, expressions, postures, gestures, a look, a touch, alongside, fashions and social behaviour and interactions. A narrative full of complexities and ambiguities, like a series of modern day tableaux. Although much of America is segregated and separated by race or income, and this difference is exploited as a means to polarise and divide,

it is far too simple to define a community through this narrow identity. What I have attempted to do is create a group portrait of multiple identities, where people stand together, in a company of strangers.

George Georgiou, 2019