Bare Handed

- The first book by this award-winning American photographer, presenting a nuanced portrait of rural life in 21st-century America - Her photographs are in the collections of the Yale University Art Gallery, the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, and the Lowe Art Museum in Miami - An exquisite object, beautifully printed and bound in Italy using 5 kinds of paper, with a 4-color printed slipcase and Swiss binding In Bare Handed, photographer Holly Lynton presents a nuanced portrait of rural life in 21st-century America. Returning to specific communities year after year, Lynton moves beyond mythology to reveal a complex social landscape suffused with tradition but unburdened by nostalgia. The 85 gestural portraits and visceral landscapes in her debut monograph depict people working barehanded in tandem with their environments, using tools mostly replaced by mechanization. This decade-long series goes far beyond the yields of a harvest to celebrate an almost spiritual state of being that emerges from time-honored practice and underscores a commitment to unmediated experiences with the natural world. Her keen attention to cultural visual memory is further contextualized in original poetry and essays by art historians Terence Washington and Carl Fuldner. Lynton's spellbinding color photographs convey an elemental connection to animals, the earth, and ritualized agricultural practices. The imposing, often tense physicality of the men, women, and animals and the dramatic lighting turn barns and compost heaps into stages for conflict, surrender, and transfiguration" - The Boston Globe.