America in Crisis

New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston [A Ridge Press Book], 1969. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Good. 30 cm, 192, illus. DJ has edgewear, soiling, and some creasing. The contents are: Foreword, The American Dream, Streak of Violence, The Deep Roots of Poverty, Battle of Equality, The Unwanted War, Confrontation, The Political Response, and The Quality of American Life. Magnum photographers with work in this book include Eve Arnold, Cornell Capa, Bruce Davidson, Elliott Erwitt, Burt Glinn, Philip Jones Griffiths, Charles Harbutt, Danny Lyon, Constantine Manos, Don McCullin, Wayne Miller, Dennis Stock, and Burk Uzzle. Also included is work by Mary Ellen Mark and Hiroji Kubota. 192 pages; profusely illustrated with b&w gravure plates; 8.5 x 12 inches. Out of Print. A great collection of photographs describing the state of the nation in the 1960s. Includes mini-photo-essays by Lyon, McCullin, Griffiths, Manos, Erwitt and Harbutt. Mitchel R. Levitas was a journalist who won the prestigious George Polk Award in his 20s for a series on labor racketeering and held leading newsroom positions at The New York Times for decades. A native New Yorker, he joined the newspaper in 1965 as a writer and editor with The New York Times Magazine. He retired 37 years later, in 2002, as editorial director of book development, a post in which he inaugurated volumes of the best writing by Times reporters and anthologies of Times reportage on great historical events. He wrote the text for "America in Crisis" (1969), a book of Magnum photo agency photographs chronicling the tumultuous 1960s. Magnum Photos is a co-operative owned and run by its member photographers, who undergo a rigorous process of self-selection in order to become full members. The photographers meet once a year, during the last weekend in June, in New York, Paris or London, to discuss Magnum's affairs. The following text on Magnum's history is by Fred Ritchin, taken from the book Magnum Photos, published by Nathan in the Collection Photo Poche, 1997,and extracted from the Magnum website: Two years after the apocalypse that was called the Second World War. Two years after the apocalypse that was called the Second World War ended, Magnum Photos was founded. The world's most prestigious photographic agency was formed by four photographers - Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David "Chim" Seymour - who had been very much scarred by the conflict and were motivated both by a sense of relief that the world had somehow survived and the curiosity to see what was still there. They created Magnum in 1947 to reflect their independent natures as both people and photographers - the idiosyncratic mix of reporter and artist that continues to define Magnum, emphasizing not only what is seen but also the way one sees it. These four formed Magnum to allow them and the fine photographers who would follow the ability to work outside the formulas of magazine journalism. The agency, initially based in Paris and New York and more recently adding offices in London and Tokyo, departed from conventional practice in two fairly radical ways. It was founded as a co-operative in which the staff, including co-founders Maria Eisner and Rita Vandivert, would support rather than direct the photographers. Copyright would be held by the authors of the imagery, not by the magazines that published the work. This meant that a photographer could decide to cover a famine somewhere, publish the pictures in "Life" magazine, and the agency could then sell the photographs to magazines in other countries, such as Paris Match and Picture Post, giving the photographers the means to work on projects that particularly inspired them even without an assignment. Within five years of its founding, Magnum had also added to its roster talented young photographers such as Eve Arnold, Burt Glinn, Erich Hartmann, Erich Lessing, Marc Riboud, Dennis Stock and Kryn Taconis. Riboud soon followed Cartier-Bresson with his own pioneering work in China, the first of many trips in what has become a lifelong interest. Arnold took a memorable series of pictures of the Black Muslims and of Marilyn Monroe. Taconis covered the Algerian war for independence. Soon others such as Rene Burri, Cornell Capa (Robert's younger brother), Elliott Erwitt and Inge Morath would join. The agency was growing. But there was a feeling that it was heading in some wrong directions. In a memorable 1962 memo addressed to "All Photographers" Cartier-Bresson, attempted to remind the photographers of their place in the world.