Western Rider: Views from a Car Window

Rating:
Summary: A wraparound landscape.
Review:
Chuck Forsman rightly points out in his Prologue that most folk experience the vastness of America through the windshield of their car. Developing that thought eventually produced this book of seventy-six black and white photos. Most of them clearly show a bit of the windscreen or the curved framing of the side window and as a lovely little extra some have a picture in a picture thanks to the outside car mirror.

Look through the photos fairly quickly and it certainly does suggest a sort of car journey during the day and night and various weather conditions but when I looked through the pages slowly I felt the journey aspect started to unravel. A bit more than a quarter of the images are either blurred or lack any formal visual focal point, 'Blizzard' on page ninety-two falls into this category, it really isn't worth a second look. Most of the rest are very ordinary in their subject matter and it could be said that this reflects the reality of the land, mile after mile, as seen from a car.

The best pictures I feel are those taken when Forsman's car was stationary, page eighteen shows part of Lead, South Dakota and page thirty-three has a stunning shot of the City of Commerce with the Denver skyline in the distance, both of these have the useful black framing of the curved side window.

The design and printing of the book are excellent as one would expect from the Center For American Places but I thought 'Western Rider', though an interesting photographic idea, did not come up to the potential I would have expected.




Rating:
Summary: These photos have no soul
Review: Please, these soul-less amatuerish photos are an offense to the paper they are printed on, Just say to the this absurd collection

Rating:
Summary: like it or not, we see the world through car windows
Review: Some people may miss the point of these pictures as they are subtle. They speak to our condition as a people and the condition of our spaces. These are great pictures which will touch the soul of anyone who has spent time driving the west.

Rating:
Summary: Gary Winogrand on wheels!
Review: This is a terrific book that brings back memories to anyone who has driven the lonely, open spaces of the west. This is the way we usually see things - from the inside of our cars. We see the wipers, antenna and the windshields sungradient used to frame these images. There is the image in the snow of a six pack of beer left by the road near the Idaho/Montana border and the almost humorous and inevitable view in the rearview mirror of the state police car. There are hitchikers, dead cows, live cows and little boys waving - it's the essence of modern America and "street photography"from a slightly different perspective.He's Gary Winogrand on wheels!!