Hometowns: An American Pilgrimage

A neat idea, visiting the small towns whose famous sons became part of American life: James Dean from Fairmount, Indiana; Ronald Reagan from Dixon, Illinois and Mark Twain from Hannibal, Missouri. As well as the photos there a few pages in the three sections with writings by or about these three, fortunately, though, these don't take up too much space. I was a bit disappointed with the eighty-eight duotones, especially when compared to Tice's other books. The benchmark for me is Paterson II, a book of stunning photos that has the advantage of printing with 600 screen quad tone (take my word for it, this is unprecedented quality) on incredibly smooth matt art paper (Hello Silk) and not far short of having an actual print in your hands. `Hometowns' is on reasonable paper but the photos are only in 150 screen and it shows. Also many of the street scenes have shadows that tend to pull the detail to a sort of mid-tone grey, basically the photos lack sparkle because of the paper and printing. Still, the Tice eye for compositions is here. The three towns have street scene detail that he captures so well and I think these are the best photos in the book. The others: landscapes around the towns; interiors and close-ups (Dean's motorcycle, Reagan's 1928 Yearbook for example) sort of fill the pages between the lovely street shots. The book, twelve inches square, does have the advantage of presenting the photos centered on the page with wide margins in the best photo book tradition. ***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.