American Pictures: A Personal Journey Through the American Underclass [Paperback]

Jacob Holdt (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Danish

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: American Pictures Foundation; First edition (June 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 8798170201
• ISBN-13: 978-8798170204
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #300,092 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible eye opener on the "dark side" of life in the USA, March 24, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: American Pictures: A Personal Journey Through the American Underclass (Paperback)

I bought this book not realizing quite what I was in store for. I have now been in shock for several days as I've looked through the pictures and read the stories.

If you want to prove to "doubting Thomases" that there has been slavery in recent (1980's) America or that our pockets of poverty rival anything you'll find in the Third World, there's no shortage of information or evidence. Yes, the fact that it's dated is becoming a drawback, but not an insurmountable one. You can easily update this information by typing in place names into Google or another search engine. I learned that the slavery cases in northern Florida resulted that Holdt reported on in the early 1980's persist up to now -- several "slave owners" were sent to jail just last year from this location.

Holdt is perpetually reflective on his experiences in the States, and the insights he repeatedly throws out to the reader were as appreciated (and "rang many bells") as the pictures themselves. The people this young hitchhiking hippie met is nothing short of astounding -- his beds for the night alternated between Rockefellers and impoverished indians, African Americans, and ladies of the night. He describes all these experiences, often in the form of letters back home. His wry humor spices the text without belittling a thing. His questioning of a completely drunk Ted Kennedy over a congressional bill had me in stitches, then the insight which followed had me thinking for hours.

There are a very few somewhat provocative nude pictures of couples that might put this book off to show young teens. However, if this book was in every classroom in America, you would quickly see a change in the way American view their country, and their motivation towards finding solutions to chronic problems.

The book is jam packed with pictures. None are captioned, the text mostly refers to them, but even when it doesn't, you easily get the picture.

Mr. Holdt does annual college slide shows in the United States, and his web site is worth visiting. He's still active and wants to do a new edition, money-willing!

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars America through the eyes of an outsider; one man's journey, November 21, 1999

By 

Sarah Green (Boston, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Pictures: A Personal Journey Through the American Underclass (Paperback)

Jacob Holdt's book is an outsider's account of American life. While he has all of the biases of his own upbringing in a welfare state, he has none of the biases of an American upbringing, and so his critique of American life is razor-sharp and unrelenting. His pictures contrast all aspects of life in the U.S., and are both artistically beautiful and emotionally moving. His personal politics are a central theme of the book, and the reader must not let any biases of his or her own interfere with its reading. Jacob Holdt's story is a colorful tale of people and places, of a journey, but above all it is an adventure. Think of it as a way to experience vagabonding without actually having to risk your own neck.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A powerful (and very dated...) book...., November 27, 2000

By 

J. Michael Showalter (Nashville, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: American Pictures: A Personal Journey Through the American Underclass (Paperback)

This book features artistically beautiful pictures of America that are designed to trouble and make think; it provides elegiac photos of a world that most of its readers have never/will never see.... It is an indictment by a foreigner of a world that he can never completely grasp and that those of us born in the US will never try to....

If left alone, the pictures depicted in the book might be too much to be believed; with the text that accompanies them, written by Holdt who is left-leaning to a fault and self-described as a Marxist, they seem more dated but also more real....

This is a really good book and worth taking a look at if you can get hold of a copy. It makes one think about how the world works in these times in which we are inclined to see plenty. Readers who liked this book would definately like Jonathan Kozol's books like 'Amazong Grace'...