Triptychs: Buffalo's Lower West Side Revisited

by Joann Wypijewski, Robert Coles (Foreword), Stephen Jay Gould (Introduction)

In the early 1970s, Milton Rogovin set out to document the neighborhood near his house. He made a series of portraits of working-class people in Buffalo's Lower West Side. Then he returned to photograph the same people in the early 1980s and again in the 1990s. The result is this remarkable and moving portrait of time and place in America. Here are fifty of an acclaimed photographer's engaging Triptychs - a visual chronicle of change, aging, endurance, and finally survival. As Robert Coles writes in his foreword, "These photographs constitute a major contribution to the American documentary tradition. They represent the insistence of one careful, gifted, attentive photographer upon seeing through, as it were, his self-assigned job of seeing."
Here we see working people who, like most Americans, find partners, have children and grandchildren, sometimes separate, and sometimes die early. Some age considerably in the ten years between photographs, others almost not at all. Some lose children, change partners and houses, and some visibly change lifestyles. What remains constant is the passing of time and its effects upon his subjects, so evident in Rogovin's work. These are among the themes observed and discussed in Stephen Jay Gould's illuminating introduction.

Genres: Photography

142 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1994

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ignore the essays, and really focus on the photos. The images are wonderful, and the brain makes great leaps about family, relationships, and humanity. You can almost feel your eye communicating with your brain. Wonderful images.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

An astonishing achievement in portrait photography. Worth seeking out. Have a look at Milton Rogovin's website. http://www.miltonrogovin.com/display_...