Things, people and events harbor within them more than we can know or understand, until looked at with slight inflection. If you get it right, you don’t have to explain. -John Gossage.

With this characteristic off-kilter curiosity John Gossage continues his loving yet critical, generous yet ironic vision of America; I Love You So Much!!!!!!!!! is the fourth book in his ongoing series on this theme, following Should Nature Change (2019), Jack Wilson’s Waltz (2019) and The Nicknames of Citizens (2020), all published by Steidl. Gossage is as always open to the wonders of the everyday, be he making a portrait of a young artist or a tree; and he relishes the poetry of pattern in his subjects-the ripples of a tablecloth, a grid of tiles, the serpentine curls of an electrical cord. The title of the book (with not one exclamation mark too few) is taken from a handwritten inscription Gossage found on an old but beloved car in Rochester, Minnesota, for him a moment of gritty glory: It read like an afterlife, a murmur of its inhabitants long after they had parked the car and left.

It has always seemed reasonable to me that there is a story and that there are clues. To make an inanimate object have a life and a story is a common aspiration that I indulge in this book and many of my others. - John Gossage