Award-winning photographer Stephen Marc offers a vibrant new look at America and her people, presenting the before and after impact of the pandemic.
In his award-winning book, American / True Colors, Stephen Marc presents one of the most comprehensive photographic surveys ever conducted about America and Americans. For his efforts--the survey includes both the Obama and Trump presidencies--for his artistry, and for his unique African-American perspective, the Independent Publishers Book Awards gave American / True Colors its 2021 Gold Medal for the Best Book of the Year in Photography.
But Stephen Marc was not finished with telling the American story. In Street Cat Tales and Tangled Times, the artist takes us on another sweeping journey, coast to coast, this time straddling before and during the COVID years when America and Americans were confronted by a multitude of unprecedented challenges that affected citizens in every aspect of life no matter where they might live.
Introduced by Dr. Carla D. Hayden, 14th Librarian of Congress and the first woman and first African American to hold that distinguished post since its founding in 1802, and featuring 210 new photographs by Stephen Marc, including 85 captivating digital montages, Street Cat Tales and Tangled Times offers a creative and highly insightful look at how Americans have been living their life on the streets during this time of COVID and controversial Supreme Court rulings and the severe impacts of climate change, social injustice, mass shootings and gun violence, inflation, intense political division, the Big Lie, the January 6 insurrection, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and so much more.
As was the case with American / True Colors, in Street Cat Tales and Tangled Times we see how the American journey continues. How in our ongoing search for a more perfect Union we need to recognize and respect more fully the personal histories that brought us here and the truths we need to face. How in the process of moving forward toward an uncertain future we embrace the joy of living and learn to grow and heal as families, communities, and a nation.
Hayden, Carla: - Carla D. Hayden is the 14th Librarian of Congress, the first woman and first African American to hold the post since 1802. From 1993 until 2016, she was the CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore and served as President of the American Library Association from 2003 to 2004. In 1995, Dr. Hayden was honored with the National Librarian of the Year Award by Library Journal, the first African American to receive this prestigious honor, and in 2020 she was elected to the American Philosophical Society. She received her B.S. in political science and African history from Roosevelt University and her M.S. and Ph.D. in library science from the University of Chicago. Her books include A Frontier of Librarianship: Services for Children in Museums (Chicago, 1987) and, as editor, Venture into Cultures: A Resource Book of Multicultural Materials and Programs (American Library Association, 1992).
Marc, Stephen: - Stephen Marc is a documentary/street photographer and digital montage artist, who was raised on the South Side of Chicago. He is Professor of Art at Arizona State University, where he began teaching in 1998, after twenty years on the faculty of the Department of Photography at Columbia College Chicago. Marc has received grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, and his awards include the Society for Photographic Education's Insight Award. In 2021, Marc was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography. Marc has published three photography books: Passage on the Underground Railroad (University Press of Mississippi, 2009); The Black Trans-Atlantic Experience: Street Life and Culture in Ghana, Jamaica, England, and the United States (Columbia College Chicago, 1992); and Urban Notions (Ataraxia Press, 1983). Since 2008, Passage on the Underground Railroad has been listed as an Interpretative Program of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, a division of the National Park Service.
