Overview

This book provides an unusual look at cultural and political life in the United States over nearly three decades of change and stability. It combines the individual projects of photographers Frederick Baldwin and Wendy Watriss as well as their combined 13-year documentary collaboration on three different cultural frontiers in Texas. What connects all of these projects is the artists' commitment to exploring social history beyond the clichés of class and race. In Wendy Watriss's Vietnam work, the images emerge from a sense of outrage at the injustice perpetrated on U.S. veterans of the Vietnam War by their own government. In Frederick Baldwin's Civil Rights work in Georgia and the lives of poor whites, the images provide an intimate glimpse of people's survival in their struggle for dignity and justice. These works honor the strength and beauty of these struggles. The photographs shown in Looking at the U.S. reveal the human face of a complex and fascinating history that has particular relevance to the values and political philosophy of the momentous political changes in the U.S.

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Frederick C. Baldwin was born in Switzerland where his father was American Counsul. Baldwin fought in Korea as a Marine, 1950-1951. He attended Columbia College, graduating in 1956, when he then began documenting life in the Arctic He recorded the Civil Rights movement in Georgia in 1963-1964 before going to Sarawak, Malaysia as Peace Corps Director in 1964. In 1966, he did magazine work in India and Afghanistan as well as on rural poverty in the southern U.S. In 1972, Baldwin teamed up with Wendy Watriss to begin a major documentary on Texas. In 1983, he co-founded FotoFest with Wendy Watriss and remains Chairman today. Wendy Watriss was born in San Francisco and moved to the East Coast and later to Europe. She graduated from NYU with honors and worked as a newspaper reporter in Florida, covering political stories, and then moved on to producing a television show for Public Television. In 1970 she began freelancing as a photographer and writer. In 1982, she won World Press and Oskar Barnack awards for her work on Agent Orange. She co-founded FotoFest with Frederick Baldwin in 1983 and began work as FotoFest senior curator and Artistic Director in 1990. Xavier Canone is the director of Musee de la Photographie, Charleroi, Belgium -- his interest in photography is in documentary subjects.

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