Meyer, continued . . .

What motivated Meyer to undertake this unique project after working in a traditional vein for many years? As he explains it, he first saw the need to incorporate digital technology into his work when he came to the United States on a Guggenheim grant in 1987. The cultural encounter he experienced, particularly the deep contrast he felt in comparison to his home country, Mexico, began to influence his thinking. He found America to be a "much more open and freewheeling society than my own" (110), liberated by its lack of heritage and tradition. As he began to record his travels, though, he came up against the limitations of realism, feeling confined by "the layout of the space" (111) in which he was working. The choice to combine fragments to form a larger whole followed from this, and as Meyer argues, the new technique remains consistent with his earlier work. Given this methodology, it is hardly surprising that many of the images have a "political" focus, capturing the contradictions inherent to Reagan's America in the late 1980's.

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