Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The photographer Richard Avedon and the writer Doon Arbus began collaborating on this book thirty years ago.  The photographs and interviews they did then remain faithful to what was, like the contents of a time capsule.

Meeting somebody and balling them means something, but it doesn't mean near as much as it used to.    --Janis Joplin, September 1969

In a society where there is institutionalized oppression, the thing is to catch government and business in the grass--actually humping.   --Florynce Kennedy, August 1969

I was so afraid of being bad and being caught at it.   --Dr. Benjamin Spock, September 1969

The connection between all the rhetoric and all the poetry, between the words of a Black Panther and those of a rock star or a pacifist, between the scars of a pop artist and those of a napalm victim, have haunted and informed the structuring of this book, with its own peculiar version of a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Booklist Review

Avedon and Seliger are primarily studio photographers, and Davidson may not have a studio, yet all three are fine portraitists. Avedon's dramatically presentational style characteristically features subjects starkly outlined by a blank backdrop who look outward or, in multifigure shots, at one another; every wrinkle, pore, and hair is sharply recorded. Taking the backdrop with him or shooting outdoors when the sky could serve instead, Avedon obtained the portraits in The Sixties. Commitment seems to radiate from them all. A few show representatives of famous types of the era, such as the U.S. soldier in Vietnam and the Vietnamese scarred by napalm. But persons famous then, like the U.S. mission council in Saigon and the era's top fashion models, as well as many sixties icons of one sort or another--rock and movie stars, political activists and politicians, and "revolutionary" artists--predominate, accompanied by great swatches from journalist Arbus' interviews with many of them. These are photographs worthy of a new wing at the National Portrait Gallery. With a bigger reputation as a documentarian, Davidson produces portraits very different from Avedon's. He meets subjects where they live and work, tries to connect with them and break down their reserve, and wanders about them, snapping the shutter, as he works. He freely uses a wide-angle lens to capture more of a subject's surroundings, even if the subject then appears distorted. Complaints about distortion are silenced by results like the bowl-like picture of Cal Ripken, in which the central image is the arabesque of his hand meeting a kid's giving him a ball to sign, or that of Noam Chomsky, head elongated but hand projecting appealingly at the viewer. These are candid, as opposed to Avedon's formal portraits, but no less charged with revealed emotion. One kind of candor that Davidson, shooting in public, doesn't record but that Avedon in the studio does is nudity. So does Seliger, but more coyly. Genitals aren't on view because, whereas displaying them connoted honesty and authenticity in the sixties, now it makes virtually no statement. Besides, Seliger, who is Rolling Stone's photographer of choice, often so immerses a subject in costumery, makeup, and lurid color that exposed skin is the last thing noticed. When the props aren't around, Seliger often has a subject do something showy: Leonardo DiCaprio mugs and pushes up a muscle in a skinny arm; Ashley Judd does a cartwheel. Bare or baroque, these artificial, emotionally undisclosing pictures work because their subjects are show people, except for one: Bill Clinton, and he wears . . . blue denims. --Ray Olson