In the preface to his book of photographs Tuned In: Television in American Life, Lloyd DeGrane relates this story:
“The impact of television first registered with me when I was delivering telephone books to an apartment building on Chicago’s South Side. I knocked on a door in a darkened hallway and this voice just said, “Come in.” The room was dark, so all I could see were silhouettes of people, illuminated by the flickering light of a television set. There were ten people altogether — a mother and father, a grandfather, and seven kids. The TV and the couch were the only pieces of furniture in the room. The only place to sit was on the floor with the kids. . . . We watched the last two minutes of a Godzilla movie. When it was over, the guy who’d invited me in said, ‘OK, now what did you want?’ ”
DeGrane began taking photographs of people watching television in the mid-eighties. His first subjects were friends and family. Later, he sought out people who watched TV in unique or unusual ways, in their homes, apartments, dormitories, and prison cells. “I would always enter a person’s home with a certain reverence or respect, as a traveler might come upon a holy place,” he says. Whenever possible, he photographed them as they watched their favorite programs — that way they paid less attention to him. Sometimes he would sit down and watch with them to gain their trust.
“I’ve been asked, ‘Were you making fun of the people in the pictures?’ ” DeGrane says, “but I never looked at it that way. I just thought these people were interesting.”
DeGrane got the idea for his project from looking at photographs of people listening to radio in the forties. He was fascinated by the places where they sat and listened, and decided it was important to record for future generations how people today watch television.
“I don’t watch much television,” DeGrane says, “but when I do I watch a thirteen-inch black-and-white set. I have to sit pretty close to see what’s on the screen. It dawns on me that looking at people through the camera lens is almost like watching my own little television.”
These photographs are included in DeGrane’s Tuned In: Television in American Life (University of Illinois Press). © 1991 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.
— Andrew Snee
The photographs from this selection are available as a PDF only. Click here to download.
