Tickled by America’s Quirky Coincidences

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Inauguration day in President Abraham Lincoln’s time was on March 4. That’s also the photographer Joshua Yospyn’s birthday â€" and if you’re given to seeing meaning in coincidences, as he is, it’s a pretty big deal.

“I’m a little superstitious about things, and Lincoln supposedly had a terrific sense of humor,” said Mr. Yospyn, 36. “I like to think he would’ve enjoyed this same project, were it done 150 years ago.”

That project, “American Sequitur,” is a series of gleefully odd juxtapositions. It’s a photo set whose sequencing is essential to the humor, and understanding, of the series.

It’s natural that Mr. Yospyn, who is based in Washington, would have a mind for noticing patterns or strange relationships, however subtle they might be. His eye is drawn to the quirks of our nation’s cultural and political landscape, and as anybody who follows the goings-on in Washington knows, it is a peculiar landscape indeed.

Investigating coincidences is how he makes some sense of it all.

“There is a gushing reservoir of irony, whimsy and pride in this country,” Mr. Yospyn said.

Joshua Yospyn God’s ark of safety, Maryland, 2012.

After a girlfriend introduced him to photography more than a decade ago, he worked sporadic freelance jobs and eventually started making freelance photo essays for TBD.com, a now-defunct local news Web site. That work made him think of his photographs as storytelling sets rather than collections of discrete moments.

His “American Sequitur” series, culled from more than 300 photos he has taken since 2009, started to take shape at the suggestion of Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb at a workshop in 2011. With their encouragement, Mr. Yospyn pursued the project to last year’s presidential conventions and beyond.

He received praise from other high places: Stephen Crowley, a New York Times staff photographer who can make quirky or snappy compositions even at a staid hearing, saw Mr. Yospyn’s work at a portfolio review.

“I was looking at it and I was thinking, ‘God, I wish I had shot this picture,’ ” Mr. Crowley said.

Joshua Yospyn Ronald at the Cherry Blossom Parade in Washington, 2010.

While Mr. Yospyn’s whimsical photo romp is somewhat political in nature â€" almost a given since he lives and works in the capital â€" he says he has no partisan allegiance and has voted both Republican and Democratic tickets.

“I have opinions,” he said. “But I’m literally right in the middle, like smack middle independent.”

What interests him, “kind of to the extreme,” is the vehemence with which the opposing sides express themselves. “I’m highly interested in topics like American jingoism â€" the extreme battles that go on in this country and the positions that people take on one side or the other,” he said.

But his aim isn’t to incense either side. Rather, he seeks to emphasize the sillier aspects of the American political experiment â€" to poke fun and to have fun. Photography these days just isn’t funny enough, he said.

At the Look3 photography festival in Charlottesville, Va., in 2009, he said, he was overwhelmed by all the serious topics that photojournalists make it their mission to document. He went to a talk given by one of his favorite contemporaries, Martin Parr, who is no slouch at making weird pictures. Amid all the grimness, Mr. Yospyn was struck by Mr. Parr’s wit and dry sense of humor, even if he did hail from our old colonial overseer, Britain. Mr. Parr inspired him to ask himself, “He’s doing that in England â€" what if I did it here?”

“Plus,” Mr. Yospyn said, “we both seem to enjoy working in terrible weather.”

Sometimes it seems oddness follows Mr. Yospyn, both in front of and behind the lens. In Grand Central Terminal in New York, he happened on a scene swiped right off a Monopoly board. An elderly man with a copy of The New York Post at his feet was nodding off, almost completely horizontal. He was slouched next to a much more aristocratic-looking and upright gentleman, who was reading The Times.

“The man next to him at the next table is completely alert with whatever he’s reading,” said Mr. Yospyn, who hovered, taking pictures.

A woman, out of the frame, gave him a strange look as he worked, wondering what the relationship here was.

“I just sort of turned to her and put my finger on my mouth and said, ‘Shh,’ ” he said. “And then I just walked away.”

That moment, by the way, was on Oct. 9, 2012, a mere day after Steven Spielberg’s bio-pic “Lincoln” premiered at the New York Film Festival. Coincidence?

Joshua Yospyn The 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla.

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