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If postmodernism is the attitude of skepticism towards naturalized versions of history, then applying a postmodernist approach to Jefferson’s Monticello inquires into the origins of how American idealism, the tendency to inflate our history to ideal standards, began with excusing how our legacy is founded on the atrocity of slavery. To understand this inquiry, it is important to grasp how it situates among Casebere’s contemporaries who were experiencing similar disillusionment from hoping the Vietnam war would restabilize American confidence, and they were expressing it through the medium of photography. These contemporaries comprise the Pictures Generation, a subset of postmodernist artists that share the mass media culture into which they were born. Their artistic themes center around the notion that American ideas of collective identity are learned through disseminated constructions of race, gender, and citizenship which those in power infuse into the very institutions that Casebere examines (Eklund, 2004). Monticello being the expansive plantation where Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people, represents the inception point that these institutions evident of American identity branch off of. Reaffirming this notion, Casebere explains that much of his work embodies a “search for origins, and Jefferson represents the origin of an American self-image,” (Schmidt & Faisst, 2017). While many celebrate Monticello as a monument to early American ingenuity and innovation because Thomas Jefferson designed the entire estate himself, the home is more significantly a monument to American idealism because this celebration excuses the atrocities of slavery for the sake of legacy. Excusing the implications of American idealism defines the American “self-image.” Even though Casebere produced the Monticello series years after the Pictures Generation era, the fact that the series not only addresses American idealism but reaches its origins makes it his boldest and therefore most compelling postmodernist work. 

To accomplish this postmodernist critique of Jefferson’s Monticello, Casebere employs unique technical strategies to alter the composition of the home, the most jolting of which is how he floods the interior with water. In the image, flooded water fills a blue room adorned with arching windows and thick crown molding. The pitch-black area outside of the windows combined with the dark tint of the water contributes to the overall ominous tone of the image. Casebere himself acknowledges water filling up nearly half of the frame would usually elicit feelings of dread and fear, like a threat of destruction; however, he underscores that the water signifies a “kind of abundance [of life]” (Hamilton, 2000). Although he doesn’t elaborate much more on what he means by abundance, I believe his meaning is two-fold when applied to Monticello. Jefferson’s expansive plantation stretches nearly 5,000 acres wide and he filled every room with traces of his personal taste such as globes, artwork, books, and even a copy of the Declaration of Independence which he signed himself; for Casebere, the “house is a symbol of excess” (Hamilton, 2000). Yet, a major portion of those 5,000 acres was labored by slaves who he reduced to the sole purpose of exploiting for monetary gain. Through the presence of the flooded water, Casebere reminds his viewer that Thomas Jefferson’s legacy came from an abundance of wealth and influence, but also an abundance of abusing such powers. This second lens of assessing Casebere’s meaning is more pessimistic and aligns with the sinister, fear-inducing tone of the image, but is crucial to understanding his complex postmodernist critique. While the Monticello series is not the only one of Casebere’s works to depict a flood, it does so in a way that out of his entire oeuvre best captures his conceptualization of the flood as more than a stimulus of panic, but a symbol of a multifaceted abundance.

Another of Casebere’s unique technical strategies that shift the sense of reality in the Monticello series is how he has stripped the interior of any identifying artifacts that signal the home is in fact Monticello. Jefferson filled Monticello with his personal belongings as a testament to his unique taste, but in making his model Casebere has stripped the home of everything that makes it iconic. In his book Ways of Seeing, art critic John Berger discusses the idea of female nudity in art and the viewer’s aesthetic experience of viewing such a piece. While at first it may seem that James Casebere’s work is entirely unrelated to this phenomenon because he does not include any human subjects in his photography, Berger’s fundamental premise can be applied to Casebere’s artistic perspective on the architectural models he uses. What is exposed in the Monticello series is not the vulnerability of the female form but the bareness of this emptied estate. In the photos, Casebere has stripped the room of any identifying artifacts that would signal the room is in Jefferson’s Monticello, or that it is a person’s home of any sort. Berger writes that “clothes encumber contact,” (Berger, 1972). The clothes, if applied to Casebere’s work, are the personal effects that would mask, or “encumber [the viewer’s] contact,” with the twisted underbelly of Jefferson’s legacy. The home is rendered nude. By Berger’s definition, Casebere has made Monticello into a “display” to be “seen naked by others and yet not recognized for [itself]” (Berger, 1972). Casebere puts on display what was unspeakable, what Jefferson shrouded from everyone he kept outside, uninformed, and excluded from the promise of generational stability and legacy that he possessed. Casebere has therefore exposed a vulnerability in all that Jefferson did to flaunt his wealth and abundance and produced an uncanny representation of what is no longer a home but an empty, naked space. By denuding Monticello, the image showcases Casebere’s keen sensibility for the way the viewer sees and perceives art creating a visually intriguing and thought-provoking piece.

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Berger, J. (1972). Ways of Seeing. Monoskop. Retrieved March 28, 2022, from

https://monoskop.org/images/9/9e/Berger_John_Ways_of_Seeing.pdf

Eklund, D. (2004, October). The pictures generation. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved March

3, 2022, from https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pcgn/hd_pcgn.htm 

Hamilton, W. L. (2001, May 28). An artist’s novel take on history: He lets the walls talk. The New York

Times. Retrieved March 3, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/28/arts/an-artist-s-

novel-take-on-history-he-lets-the-walls-talk.html

James Casebere. (n.d.). Retrieved March 3, 2022, from https://www.jamescasebere.com/

Schmidt, & Faisst, J. I. (2017). Picturing America: Photography and the Sense of Place. Brill-

Rodopi. https://brill-com.libproxy2.usc.edu/downloadpdf/title/39340.pdf