Project Info:
Obamaland is a project that began in January 2008 when I returned to Chicago , my hometown, where I had not lived with any great regularity since I was 15 years old. I began working as a freelance photojournalist, focusing primarily on the social and political landscape of the city I grew up in. The city of legendary elections, machine politicians, and father and son mayors for life, Barack Obama emerged as an outsider in the U.S. presidential election and has made himself into the single greatest student to date of the Chicago machine he emerged from. His campaign represented both the emergence of a new generation on the world stage while affirming the battle-tested strength of the Chicago machine. When the moment came for him to claim a hard fought victory on November 4, 2008, he greeted 250,000 people gathered in Grant Park along Chicago’s lakefront. His first words to the nation were not “my fellow Americans,” but rather “hello Chicago!”
The first black man elected leader of a white, Western society in history, Obama is no ordinary student. And, as the cliché goes, these are no ordinary times. The campaign he fought was dominated by one-word slogans like “hope” and “change.” To the American electorate which endorsed these slogans with their feet, these were more than “just words.” His predecessor’s tenure in the White House was dominated by similarly imbued words like “homeland” and “security.” The veiled political subtext in each of these terms – absurd, opaque and deliberately misleading – can be found in the corresponding political and social landscape.
These images form an early exploration in the newly conceived psychological space: Obamaland. I did not invent this space; I have heard others – tourists, intellectuals, locals – refer to the city of gangsters and machine Democrats as “Obamaland.” This new place suggests an artificial year zero. While his achievements have undoubtedly inspired a generation forward in tumultuous times, it is important to remember the lessons of history, because if people cannot remember history will surely forget.
Biography:
Amanda Rivkin, 24, is a photojournalist based in her hometown, Chicago, where she has photographed for Agence France Presse/Getty Images, Der Spiegel, The New York Times, Newsweek, among others. Her work has appeared on the front pages of Le Monde, The New York Times, and The Washington Post and in such international publications as The Financial Times, Foreign Policy, and The London Sunday Times Magazine.
Amanda has worked as a photographer, writer and researcher for news media, policy, diplomatic, and cultural organizations, as well as photographers and writers. She speaks fluent Spanish, Portuguese and Polish and is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York.
Upon completion of graduate school, she worked as an intern at The Associated Press bureau in Madrid. She then went on to spend several weeks in Ethiopia photographing the Coptic millennium celebrations for The Associated Press and BBC Focus on Africa Magazine. In late 2007, she completed a McCloy Fellowship in Journalism in Germany and Poland. In 2008, Amanda worked as an assistant to VII photographer Stephanie Sinclair.
Since early 2008, Amanda has been based in Chicago. She has covered Illinois and national politics including Barack Obama’s election night victory, transition to the presidency, and historic inauguration, the corruption scandal surrounding Rod Blagojevich and his final day in the Illinois governor’s office where she was the sole photographer to shadow him for The New York Times. Amanda has produced several features surrounding the financial crisis and its impact on the midwestern United States as well as spot news, features, and personal projects on a range of topics including public housing, education, and immigration. Since 2008, she has been affiliated with Polaris Images. She is the recipient of several awards and grants.