Michael LesyAngel's WorldThe New York Photographs of Angelo RizzutoThe fascinating search for meaning in the life and work of a little-known photographer.
IN THIS PROFOUND and disturbing book, noted
photo historian Michael Lesy is in search of a man
who left a strange archive of sixty thousand images to
the Library of Congress. We learn that he was Angelo
Rizzuto, but he called himself "the little Angel." He
lived in a single, run-down room in a crummy hotel.
We learn that every day he left at 2:00 P.M. to photograph
New York City obsessively, from above and on
the streets. We see the cityscapes he took, compassionate
photographs of children and confrontational
pictures of angry women. We see his anguished selfportrait
taken almost every day. These are the obvious
discoveries. What is not obvious is why—what did it
all mean? In his thoughtful and erudite essay Lesy has
fashioned nothing less than a psychoanalytic dissection
of a tortured soul in an account that is both
deeply unsettling and satisfying at the same time.
From his first book, Wisconsin Death Trip, to his most recent, Long Time Coming, MICHAEL LESY has changed the way we see our past. A professor of literary journalism at Hampshire College, he lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. |
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December 2005 / hardcover / ISBN 0-393-06111-6 / 90 duotone photographs / 128 pages / PHOTOGRAPHY | |||||
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