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Look at the U.S.A.
A Diary of War and Home
Peter van Agtmael
£40.00
A chronicle of post-9/11 America, at war and at home, as seen through the lens of one of Magnum Photos’ leading photographers: a compelling and ground-shaking meditation on war and society
See InsideOverview
LOOK AT THE U.S.A. is a searingly honest portrait of post-9/11 America by Magnum photographer Peter van Agtmael. Broadly chronological, images from the front line of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are interspersed with conflicts at home, from protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline to the storming of the Capitol, and layered with van Agtmael’s personal reflections, critique and interviews with those he has encountered along the way.
Exploring race, class, nationalism, the mythology of war and America’s self-image, LOOK AT THE U.S.A. is by turns damning, surreal, moving, confronting, ironic – and always attuned to the human cost.
Reviews
'A weighty record of two decades of fallout from Helmand Province to Harrisburg, Illinois … As Obama gives way to Trump and to Biden, Look at the USA catches up to our present moment'
British Journal of Photography
'Threaded through with often deeply personal, self-questioning reflections, it is also a fraught conversation with himself about the nature and thorny ethics of his vocation. Van Agtmael’s American images suggest the simmering discontent that has since been leveraged by Donald Trump and a Republican party in thrall to his inflammatory rhetoric'
Observer
'Alongide reflection on the ethics of his vocation, van Agtmael’s photos… are a disconcerting examination of the faultlines that have defined America’s troubled society'
Financial Times
Product Information
Book Details
Format: Hardback
Size: 24.2 x 19.0 cm
Extent: 352 pp
Illustrations: 186
Publication date: 4 April 2024
ISBN: 9780500027028
About the Author
Peter van Agtmael is an American photographer based in Paris, and has been a full member of Magnum Photos since 2013. His previous books include Disco Night Sept 11 and Sorry for the War. Van Agtmael is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the W. Eugene Smith Fund Grant, the ICP Infinity Award for Young Photographer, the LUMIX FREELENS Award, the Aaron Siskind Grant and several World Press Photo Awards. He has been a mentor in the Arab Documentary Photography Program in Beirut since 2014.
