Jacob Holdt
"American Pictures" Scheduled for February 21 at UMC
In the early 1970s Jacob Holdt, a young man from Denmark, arrived in America with only $40. He ended up staying for five years and hitchhiking over 118,000 miles across the country.
Holdt will present a detailed account of his traveling experiences, a show called "American Pictures," at the University of Minnesota, Crookston (UMC) on Thursday, February 21, from 6:30-9:30 p.m. in Bede Ballroom. Admission is free and the event is open to the public.
For the past 25 years, Holdt has presented the photos he took during his travels and has described his personal odyssey via "American Pictures." The show has been updated constantly to reflect his more recent travels and experiences.
He has sold blood plasma twice weekly to afford to buy film for his camera, and he has lived in more than 400 homes, from those of the poorest migrant workers to those of America's wealthiest families like the Rockefellers.
Seeking a deeper understanding of life through his travels, Holdt worked under slavery conditions with migrant workers and infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan and U.S. neo-Nazi groups. He lived with criminals and mass murderers and lost many of his friends to violence.
An important thrust of the show concerns institutionalized poverty, fear, and insecurity. As an outsider having grown up in what he describes as a European welfare state, Holdt challenges established American thought patterns by demonstrating through his photography the enormous financial and human costs of life without cradle-to-grave security.
Holdt has presented "American Pictures" more than 1150 times at more than 300 colleges and universities. The program has been reviewed by the Los Angeles Times (“disturbingly powerful”), The Village Voice (“a masterpiece”), San Francisco Chronicle (“utterly stunning, powerful, disturbing”), The New York Times, New York Post, National Catholic Reporter, Journal of Humanist Sociology, and many others.
For more information, visit Holdt’s website: www.american-pictures.com.
This event is sponsored by UMC’s Concerts and Lectures Committee. Disability accommodations are available upon request by calling 218-8506.
Posted 02/13/2002
Contact: Andrew Svec,
218-281-8435