Men in America

More about the book

For fifteen years, men have been the focus of Thomas Frederick Arndt's street photographs: men at work, men in transit, men at bars, men in uniform, men at rest. Arndt describes the photos as "pictures of ... our male family," and in them he documents, through his unique vision, an Everyman as full of pathos as Arthur Miller's Willie Loman. Arndt provides an unrelenting look at the often lonely, sometimes alienated, always eyecatching position of American men in contemporary society. Men are always looking. For something. These photographs echo the question raised by Larry Heinemann in the introduction: "Men in America. Who are we?" He captures their common expressions and gestures against a backdrop of tickertape parades, the New Orleans jazz festival, the Holocaust Survivors convention, and gatherings of street punks. These men are the spiritual heirs of that classic place in Robert Frank's The Americans. Like Frank, Larry Heinemann, a Vietnam Vet and National Book Award-winning author, considers the raw dilemma of men and the uncertain assumption about their new roles in society today.