Description
Irwin Klein and the New Settlers: Photographs of Counterculture in New Mexico shares a peek at a group of New Settlers in New Mexico during the counterculture period, beginning in the late 1960s, through the lens of photographer and documentarian Irwin Klein. The photos in the book, paired with evocative essays about New Mexico during that period, come from a five-year time period just before Klein’s death in 1974 (after which the negatives were lost). The book presents the cultural shifts, innovative ideologies, and rugged real lives of the New Settlers, a group of young pioneers who came to New Mexico with a message, the affects of which can still be seen today. Annotation ©2016 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
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Dropouts, renegades, utopians. Children of the urban middle class and old beatniks living alone, as couples, in families, or as groups in the small Nuevomexicano towns. When photographer Irwin Klein began visiting northern New Mexico in the mid-1960s, he found these self-proclaimed New Settlers—and many others—in the back country between Santa Fe and Taos. His black-and-white photographs captured the life of the counterculture’s transition to a social movement. His documentation of these counterculture communities has become well known and sought after for both its sheer beauty and as a primary source about a largely undocumented group.By blending Klein’s unpublished work with essays by modern scholars, Benjamin Klein (Irwin’s nephew) creates an important contribution to the literature of the counterculture and especially the 1960s. Supporting essays emphasize the importance of a visual record for interpreting this lifestyle in the American Southwest. Irwin Klein and the New Settlers reinforces the photographer’s reputation as an astute observer of back-to-the-land, modern-day Emersonians whose communes represented contemporary Waldens.
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