Americans We (Signed)

Eugene Richards. Americans We.

New York, NY: Aperture, 1994. 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall. Fine first edition in fine dust jacket. This copy is SIGNED by Richards.

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