Americans We (Signed First Edition)

RICHARDS, Eugene

ISBN 10: 0893815942 / ISBN 13: 9780893815943

Published by Aperture, New York, 1994

About this Item

First edition and first printing. Hardcover. 123 pages. A moving collection of black and white photographs by Richards that includes a wide cross section of people at various social stratas but all filtered through his caring eye. Includes 100 duotone images. A clean near fine copy with some slight tapping to the bottom right corners and in a very near fine dust jacket. Signed by Richards on the front free endpaper.

Seller Inventory # 212258

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Americans We (Signed First Edition)
• Publisher: Aperture, New York
• Publication Date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0893815942
• ISBN 13: 9780893815943
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Dust Jacket Condition: dj
• Weight: 4.5 pounds
• Signed: Signed
• Seller catalogs:
  • Photography

About this title

Synopsis

In the course of his extraordinary career as a photo-journalist, Eugene Richards has seen many faces of America. From years of poignant, often riveting and sometimes controversial reporting, both on and off assignment, comes Americans We. In turn tender, funny, disturbing, and sublime, Richards's photographs and writing cohere like poetic verse. His talent for rendering the very essence of contemporary life has never before been so discernable, whether depicting a Memorial Day parade, the birth of a child, an inmate on death row, or a farm couple threatened with foreclosure. From darkness and light Richards forges a vivid and idiosyncratic portrait of the American experience.

Reviews

Richards dedicates this summary of his photojournalistic coverage of the bleakest aspects of our culture to Robert Frank, who in The Americans (1959) challenged American complacency with his vision of lost souls in a land of depressing shadows. Richards offers a frightening, chaotic vision of desperate poverty and ever present violence that makes Frank's pictures look almost nostalgic. Richards is a brilliant photographer whose trademarks are working extremely close to the subject and a kind of quirky framing that results in bizarre, riveting compositions; no one uses the edge of the frame more powerfully. Yet, this book is not wholly successful. Compared with the more focused Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue (1994), it seems to embrace too big a subject. Furthermore, the self-absorbed sensitivity of Richards' text undermines the truly powerful impact of his photographs. Richards should have followed Frank's example and confined his contribution to the photographs (The Americans' only text was Jack Kerouac's oft-quoted introduction). Not Richards' best book, this is still an important addition for photography and journalism collections. Gretchen Garner