The year, 1980, remains a fixed line between more liberal decades of protest and social change and the beginning of the conservative resurgence. In the late period of 1980 the hostages in Iran had been in captivity for a year. That event helped bring about the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency. A month later, after that election, John Lennon was shot down.

John Lennon once stood as a symbol (rightly or wrongly) of the 'protest years'. Ronald Reagan stood for smaller government - the dismantling of a social contract between the government and its people. He called it, 'Morning in America'. Personal computers had not yet become a consumer product, there was no 'internet' (as we know it) and cell phones did not exist. It was the beginnings of the ME generation and a deepening gulf between 'the haves' and 'have not’s'. Soon the focus of America was on making and spending money. Stock markets were suddenly big news. If you were out of college then you had to do something and do it fast, the youth culture was getting traction and time was short. But in the background lay the emerging issue of Aids and the death it would bring to hundreds, then thousands of Americans.

If you were born in the 1950's you probably grew up under the specters of the Vietnam war, Kent State, and the killings of Martin Luther King and the Kennedy's. The background music was revolutionary, then retrograde, then blandly familiar or sadly corrupted. To many, John Lennon's death seemed like a final blow, ending a musical legacy and stifling the positive progress which started in the sixties. It should be noted that others consider that same period in history as one of moral decline.

Whatever the view held, 1980 was a turning point; one of many in our history. It may not be as explosive as other changes on the American landscape but for some of those who lived through it, it remains as affecting as any and helped mold their person and their acts.

Still Lives does not try to define the year 1980, nor shadow the years to follow but the characters live in that period and could not have existed in quite the same way during the years before or the troublesome years which came after.

—PH