Credit: David Burnett for TIME
When you look carefully at this image what is most striking is that there is only one boy, the dominant subject, wearing a watch. The lead boy stands in a defensive pose (arms crossed) before the camera -- other boys surround him, casual yet at the ready. Can we read metaphors implicit in this scene such as "the boys of summer" or as "time stands still"? Could the posturing of the boys come a little too close to cliche for us to have impact on how we understand them?
In his photography, Burnett dutifully captures feelings of confidence and perplexity in the lives of boys. And that's what Burnett does so well in his work -- he makes what seems obvious even more obvious and clear to us.
Burnett's work accompanies a story in TIME this week called "The Myth About Boys."
Boyhood is a proactive theme for a photographer to come to terms with and Burnett handles this assignment well. For the most part, Burnett is the quintessential fly on the wall in his Online essay. His photographs conjure up a stillness that belies the chaos of specific moments by speaking to the universalities of youth.
At the same time, in the article for which Burnett's pictures accompany, author David Von Drehle, provides a juxtaposition:
Statistics collected over two decades show an alarming decline in the performance of America's boys--in some respects, a virtual free fall. Boys were doing poorly in school, abusing drugs, committing violent crimes and engaging in promiscuous sex. Young males lost ground by many behavioral indicators at some point in the 1980s and '90s: sharp plunges on some scales, long erosions on others.
While Burnett's photographs conjure up a larger, more romantic, picture of boyhood in our imaginations, Von Drehle's words appear more solemn and desperate. Full of statistics and sociological referents, Von Drehle spells out the "boy crisis" in great detail, while Burnett delights us with Rockwellian moments.
In a sense, it would be quite easy to view these two forms of reportage as disparate perspectives, somehow disconnected from one another. Yet, considering the words and pictures as a package, we are bound to draw a more emotionally and intellectually challenged conclusion.