Author Description

Over a period of seven years Reiner Leist traveled across America, photographing people from Rochester to Key West and from New York City to Los Angeles. Before making a portrait the photographer asked each person to provide him with a childhood photograph. This childhood image often supplied the initial visual framework for his portrait. The essays which accompany each pair of images reveal the subjects' own views on their lives and what it means to be an American. Like America itself, the book presents a diverse tableau of race and background, youth and experience, native born and immigrant, capturing the complex mix of American today.