Doug Rickard (May 27, 1968 â November 30, 2021) was an American artist and photographer. He used technologies such as Google Street View and YouTube to find images, which he then photographed on his computer monitor. His photography has been published in books, exhibited in galleries and held in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Rickard was best known for his book A New American Picture (2010). He was the founder and publisher of the website on contemporary photography, American Suburb X, and the website These Americans which published some of his collection of found photographs.
Rickard was born in San Jose, California and brought up in Los Gatos in the San Francisco Bay Area. His father was a prominent pastor and many family members were preachers and missionaries, with a "very Reaganesque, patriotic view of America", a country "special and unique". Rickard studied United States historyâÂÂslavery, civil rightsâÂÂand sociology, at University of California, San Diego, and "lost his faith in this family vision. His adult view of America was a land not just of great achievement but also of massive injustice." At age 12 he witnessed his father having a secret extramarital affair, which he confessed to his congregation years later in 1988. Rickard said this experience prompted him "to look for the fault lines in the American dream." He took the firm position that art did not need to be edifying, saying, "I don't think I'll be chasing any happy endings with the work I do."
He lived in Shingle Springs, near Sacramento, California.
Rickard was founder and publisher of the website on contemporary photography American Suburb X, which the British Journal of Photography considers "influential"; and the website These Americans, which published some of his collection of found photographs.
His most noteworthy books are A New American Picture (2010, 2012) and N.A. (2013, 2014).
For his series A New American Picture, Rickard "wanted to look at the state of the country in these areas where opportunity is non-existent and where everything is broken down", where "the American dream was shattered or impossible to achieve". It is said that this work comments on United States politics, poverty, racial equality and the socioeconomic climate, class; the use of technology in art, privacy, surveillance, and the large quantity of images on the web. Rickard said A New American Picture was about America and not about Google Street View.
He began work on A New American Picture in 2008, whilst working a day job in software sales at Cisco Systems. Rickard was at his computer nightly for over three years, taking 10,000 to 15,000 photographs, choosing about 80 for the series. He used a digital camera on a tripod to photograph a dedicated screen that mirrored a second screen that he used to navigate. He digitally manipulated the images to remove Google's watermark and crop extraneous information, resulting in a wide image from the wide screen computer monitor.
He cited as influences the photobooks American Photographs (1938) by Walker Evans, The Americans (1958) by Robert Frank, Uncommon Places (1982) by Stephen Shore and American Night (2003) by Paul Graham.
The work was first exhibited as part of Anonymes: Unnamed American in Photography and Film, curated by David Campany and Diane Dufour at Le Bal, Paris, in 2010. To mark that occasion Rickard produced the first edition of the book, with the publisher White Press. Its first American museum show was at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 2011.
Parr and Badger include the book in the third volume of their photobook history.
N.A. is a body of work photographed from YouTube videos, which he began working with in 2008 to 2009. The series portrays scenes of violence and crime in urban settings, often filmed on mobile devices. The title of the work is meant to be National Anthem, but is a deliberate reference and double meaning for 'N/A' (Not Applicable) as appears on forms, to signify that he considers many of the people depicted in the series are marginalized. "I came to the understanding pretty quickly that social media and the internet put into place a real predatory dynamic, where basically it motivated people to take video of other people to put up on YouTube to get shares, likes or comments."
Rickard died on November 30, 2021.
Rickard's work is held in the following permanent collections: