Western Rider
Views from a Car Window
Distributed for Center for American Places
120 pages
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73 duotone plates
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9-1/2 x 8
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© 2003
For this book, Chuck Forsman—a landscape painter held in the highest regard—undertook a fascinating project: while traveling the American West in search of places to paint, he took 35mm black-and-white photographs of the landscape as seen not from the saddle of a horse but from behind the wheel of a car. He shot his images spontaneously, in all seasons, weather conditions, and times of day, creating a body of energetic and poetically direct work that reviewers have already compared favorably to Robert Frank's The Americans—one of the twentieth century's most significant works of photography. Just as Frank offered a penetratingly honest and new view of America during the 1950s, so too does Forsman present us with equally honest views of the American West, views that capture the gripping beauty of the American road as well as the common experience we share in looking at a landscape the way it is most often seen: through the window of an automobile.
“Desolation, despoilment and death are part of our Western story, and Forsman manages to catch them all in ways that both haunt and inspire. . . . Forsman’s moving photos, moody and evocative of my own long Western wanderings, do not leave me with an impression of failure. Rather, they are a testament to the resilience--and on some far-future day--the triumph of earth over all humanity’s fleeting works. They make me love our tainted West all the more.”—The Daily Camera
“The angles are unique—photos sometimes completely framed by the car window or centered in a rearview mirror. . . . The perspective reflects the subjects—the open road, the transience of the Western population and the human search for a sense of place.”—Reno Gazette-Journal
“Western Rider is visual poetry that conveys the emotional essence of the western road trip. Not the corporatized, homogenous four-lane rush, but the type of trip we might expect from the likes of Abbey or McPhee or Stegner. Very good company on the road, I’d say.”—David Taylor, Great Plain Quarterly
For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu
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Art: Photography
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