Robert Kalman: What’s It Like for You to Be an American?

After the January 6th, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, documentary portrait photographer Robert Kalman embarked on a four-year, 20,000-mile photo journey around the United States. Using an 8” x 10” view camera, he created portraits of more than 500 everyday Americans, asking each of his subjects to write an answer to his question on a single notebook page: “What’s it like for you to be an American?” Their handwritten responses proved to be a mix of pride, privilege, anger, frustration, gratitude, deep ambivalence, and shame.

Robert has now published a book of 76 images from the project, along with each subject’s note.

For his Soho Photo presentation, he will talk about the process of finding and photographing his subjects. Audience members will be able to examine a dozen original prints and the notebooks containing the thoughts and feelings of nearly 500 fellow Americans.

He will also do a demonstration of how the portraits were made, using his large format camera. One member of the audience will be asked to pose for a portrait and answer the question about what it’s like to be an American. That person will receive a print of their sitting.

There will be time for questions and answers, and an opportunity to purchase a copy of the book, personalized and signed by Robert.

Robert says, “From its inception, this book of portraits and statements has been about discovering what holds us together as a people, even in a time of serious discord. It’s about learning how the concept of e pluribus unum – out of many, one – still exists in today’s America. I believe the portraits and the portrait subjects’ words will lead us back to understanding the wisdom of that ideal. In the end, the people whom I included in this book are people just like you.”

For over 40 years, Robert Kalman has been making formal, large-format portraits of people he meets on streets across the globe. In addition to his portraiture, he has worked as a freelance editorial photographer for regional news-papers and magazines in the U.S. His first job after university was as news assistant to the managing editor of The New York Times.

Robert is a frequent exhibitor in galleries across the U.S. Notable among his exhibitions: a series of ambrotypes of gay and lesbian bi-racial couples; portraits of Nicaraguan villagers taken twenty years apart; dual portraits of dogs and their owner; transgender Israelis and transgender Panamanians.

In 2026, his latest work, “What’s it like for you to be an American,” will be exhibited at the Museum of Art in Stamford, CT; Chroma Gallery in Katonah, NY; and Montgomery Row in Rhinebeck, NY.

Robert and his wife, Linda, live in New York’s Mid-Hudson Valley.

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