America, the name alone evokes a range of conflicting emotions – one cannot help but feel if America sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold. The triumphalist capitalism of this superpower is keenly evoked by Komnick. Its brashness, its hyper-activity shouts out at you on almost every page. There’s little that is leisurely in the images, where the fast pace of the people dictate the rhythm of life. There’s a performative impulse is what Komnick captures, the self-assertion and confidence beams through the people, how they take their apparent well-being in their stride. Few shots convey an introspective mien of the people, a thoughtfulness, rather a seemingly never-ending exuberance, a parading of the self, an advertising of the self. Here and there are images of people doing seemingly mundane things, or being creative, making music, painting, sculpting.
     There are a fair number of eccentrics depicted, people just being themselves or taking part in group events, parading or posing, or even the odd ostensible loser who behind his bedraggled façade is probably a millionaire.
     The people captured on the streets come across, some would say, as monuments to self-indulgence or simply flaying conventions, such as the granny with her powerful motorbike. There’s little evidence of "emotions being recollected in tranquillity”, but there is an energy and an excitement that leap out of the pages of this extraordinary, extrovert tribute to the streets in America.