Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
- Best Books of 2015 - Photo District News Photo AnnualThe photographs that make up this first book by renowned photojournalist Jean-Pierre Laffont serve as a powerful and provocative examination of the American dream. For nearly three decades, Laffont traveled the breadth of the United States, a true embodiment of American freedom. Documenting the country in all of its facets - from national crises and unsightly social injustices to heartfelt protest and solidarity, the photographer took full advantage of the access granted to him bythe world's greatest democracy. He traveled all fifty of the United States to document a broad swath of the country's fabric, capturing America through some of its most turbulent eras. From the electric chair at Sing Sing to Women's Jello Wrestling, the Watkins Glen rock festival to the Kent State shooting protest in Washington DC, Laffont was front and centre to history as it unfolded. Never working on assignment, Laffont chased stories of his own volition with a lens that was at once compassionate, humanistic, and unflinching. Taken together, these pages tell the story of the chaotic, often painful, birth of twenty-first-century America - a place where a black president, gay marriage, and women executives have become the new norm. Photographer's Paradise reminds us of the power of the freedom of speech, as Laffont speaks truth to power through his camera lens. Contents: Foreword by Sir Harold Evans; Introduction: America As I Lived It; The 1960s / Expanded History: 1960s: 42nd Street; The Savage Skulls; Transvestites; Electric Chair, Sing Sing; Arkansas Prison Cummins Farm; The Krishnas; Rock Festival at Watkins Glen, 1973; The Funeral of Robert Kennedy; An Accident at Chappaquiddick. The 1970s / Expanded History: 1970s: Guam; Bombs; Protest in Washington DC against the Kent State Shooting; Boxing: Ali vs Frasier; The KKK at Home; KKK Secret Army; Carter County, Georgia; Explo 72; The Sorcerers of Brooklyn; Energy Crisis of 1973; Printing Dollars. The 1980s / Expanded History: 1980s: Women's Jello Wrestling; Children and Guns; The Rajneesh American Farmers in the 1980s.
Synopsis
Jean-Pierre Laffont is the ultimate expression of American freedom--freedom in his unimpeded documentation of society's ills and the impassioned descent of an American people exercising freedom of their own. In no other country could Laffont have accessed such a wide range of controversial subject matters. For a photojournalist, America was, and continues to be, a Photographer's Paradise. Laffont traveled all fifty of the United States to document America's broad diversity. Laffont brings a perspective both foreign and familiar to the incredible freedoms Americans enjoy and may take for granted. Jean-Pierre currently resides in New York City with his wife Eliane. Featuring an insightful foreword by Sir Harold Matthew Evans is the British-born journalist and bestselling author who was editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981. Since 1984 he has lived in the United States, where, in 1986 he founded Conde Nast Traveler and was later appointed president and publisher of Random House Publishing trade group (1990 to 1997) and editorial director and vice chairman of US News and World Report, the New York Daily News, and The Atlantic Monthly (1997 to January 2000), from which he resigned to concentrate on his notable book writing efforts. Evans's best-known book, The American Century, won critical acclaim when it was published in 1998. He was knighted for services to journalism in 2004, and in 2011 was appointed editor-at-large of the Reuters news agency. Sir Harold became an American citizen in 1993, and lives in New York with his wife Tina Brown and their two children.