Nick Waplington has been taking photographs in and around Truth or Consequences, a small town in New Mexico, for nearly 10 years. Typical and unremarkable in many ways, the town voted to change its name to that of a celebrated radio quiz show in 1950.
Waplington records the town behind the extraordinary name, the lives of its people and the landscape they live in while at the same time constructing a personal tribute to American photography, paying stylistic homage to such great pioneers of the genre as Edward Weston and Walker Evans. A highly original and strikingly perceptive work, Truth or Consequences is as thought-provoking as it is aesthetically absorbing, as it introduces us to another world whose human reality remains timelessly arresting.
'As the subject of photographer Nick Waplington's captivating lens, the town's name takes on a profundity that defies its frivolous origin. His portraits and landscape shots follow the bizarre yet somehow ordinary lives of the inhabitants of "T or C", as well as paying homage to the great pioneers of American photography such as Edward Weston and Walker Evans. These stunning yet commonplace photographs were shot over a period of ten years, during which Waplington revisited the town many times. Drawn together in a book for Phaidon, 'Truth or Consequences' has been hailed as his most extensive and enthralling study since 'Living Room' ...'
Dazed and Confused
'The book captures some genuinely affecting moments ... while also offering generous tributes to past masters of American photography.'
Time Out
'Nick Waplington has captured the combined weirdness and ordinariness of the everyday, the disused and the down-at-heel. Like a wide-screen road-movie, images of American popular culture collide.' Evening Standard
