Leah Frances is the eye behind American Squares, an Instagram photography project that documents American cultural relics and iconography. Frances’ work has been featured through numerous prints and online platforms including The New York Times Magazine, Us of America Magazine, frankie magazine, the SFMOMA blog, Subjectively Objective, Feature Shoot and PHROOM. Moreover, she has been exhibiting nationally and internationally. American Squares, moreover, is her first book.
She is currently a MFA student in Photography at The Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University in Philadelphia.
The photographer’s approach consisted of spotting places, views, color, lights and situations that hold a trace of American lifestyle or even taste.
About ‘American Squares’ – words by Leah Frances:
From 2013 through 2019, I explored America’s real and imagined images of itself through the lens of my camera. As a Canadian-born photographer raised on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, my early proximity to the United States along with a steady diet of mid-century American cinema instilled in me a fascination for commonly-held concepts of “Americanness”. Now living in Pennsylvania, I hold a deep interest in identity—its roots, and its perceptions within a culture and across time. Photography, as my vehicle through this exploration, allows me to focus on small, striking moments and to create images that carry a persistent, quiet optimism. I find that the way I choose to frame the content of my photographs: to leave out what I want but also to include what I want can create a sort of displaced experience, an alternate reality both for myself, as the photographer doing the composing, and for the viewer looking. The resulting image becomes a portal, allowing for a flexible experience of time.