Rockabillies

Jennifer Greenburg is an assistant professor of Photography at Indiana University Northwest, and has been taking photos of a Rockabilly community for a decade or more, chronicling their attempts to recreate 1950s life behind white-picket fences. The people she captures are examples of the aesthetic look of teens in the 1950s.  What is interesting and what compelled Greenburg to do the project is that this group of people have chosen to completely overlook the social and cultural dynamics that went along with that look, in other words, they acquire the look, but it is divorced completely from the context of the times. As she notes this subculture, like many other groups who emulate bygone periods of youth culture, has become a hybrid of texts and images—frequently taken out of context—for Rockabillies they draw from an era that saw race riots, cultural upheaval, and little hope for middle-class advancement. Few, if any, members of the Rockabilly culture would actually want to live in the post-war era; rather, the imagery and ideals have been adapted to serve a wistful interpretation of that time. As someone said, nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the 'good old days.'