William Gedney, Untitled, 1966-67If you'd like to see more of the photography of William Gedney, much of it can be viewed online. The physical archive resides at the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections at Duke University, but they have digitized a big chunk of it and mounted it on the Duke library's website. (The above image is really not indicative of his work, which is more often concerned with people and the social landscape of American life. The images below, from his book, are more in keeping with his concerns; the above just makes me smile.)
This is how the website describes the content:
William Gedney Photographs and Writings
The 50,000 item collection documents Gedney's work from the 1950s to 1989. Subjects include photographs of cross country road trips; rural New York; Manhattan; Brooklyn; rural Kentucky; Hippies in San Francisco; composers; gay rallies and demonstrations; St. Joseph’s School for the Deaf; India; England; Ireland; France; and, a large number of nocturnal pictures.
Included on the site are his book dummies which I always find interesting.
One of the nice things about this archive being available publicly is that the one book of his work, What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney, has become quite expensive. Not sure how this came to pass, and, of course, there is a very wide range of prices, as seems to be true of the web. It may just be because the work is very good. If for no other reason though, it's worth picking up for Maria Friedlander's lovely foreword, a glimpse of not only Gedney's life but of the Friedlander's life in photography as well. (I mean worth picking up if found for a reasonable price.)
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