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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
powerHouse Books is pleased to announce the May 2011 release of
American Studies
By Jim Dow

Jim Dow's American Studies presents a vision of America at once familiar and foreign; a country constantly reinventing itself visually, both discarding and preserving elements of its past, in a relentless, unplanned process of change.

In American Studies, Dow gives us unpeopled spaces, each resonating with a unique and telling history. A landscape, for Dow, is fashioned by ordinary individuals leaving their mark on their surroundings through everyday acts, unconscious of the enduring effect these changes have on our world. Our signs and billboards, barbershops, office buildings, libraries, pool halls, private clubs, courthouses, and motels—these places belong to a world made primarily by and for American men, and are naturally imbued with that identity.

Obsessive by nature, once praised as "dumb, in the honorific sense of the word," Dow takes photographs that depict how Americans purposefully create environments and transform their aesthetic power—spiritually, historically, and sometimes commercially. His method has evolved from an early black-and-white directness, deeply influenced by photography greats Harry Callahan and Walker Evans, to richly detailed color studies of American vernacular culture. In these beautifully realized images, made in every corner of the United States over nearly 40 years of American travel, Dow catalogs aspects of American culture that are seemingly commonplace yet always astonishingly unique.

For a preview of the book please visit: http://www.powerHouseBooks.com/americanstudies.pdf

Jim Dow studied graphic design and photography at the Rhode Island School of Design during the 1960s. From that time forward he has been the recipient of numerous commissions, fellowships, and grants that have allowed him to travel and photograph as well as exhibit and publish extensively. His subjects include folk art, roadside architecture, signs, county courthouses, baseball parks, soccer stadiums, private clubs, barbeque joints, and taco trucks. He is fascinated by the way people leave their mark on both the rural and urban landscape and seeks to preserve this through photography. He lives in Boston and teaches at Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

Photography / Americana
Hardcover, 12.25 x 11.25 inches, 136 pages, over 115 full-color photographs
ISBN: 978-1-57687-565-0    $39.95

For a preview of the book please visit: http://www.powerHouseBooks.com/americanstudies.pdf

High-res scans to your specification are available upon request; scanning from the book or lifting images from the mechanical file are strictly prohibited. Mandatory credit line: From American Studies by Jim Dow, published by powerHouse Books.

For more information, please contact Nina Ventura, Publicity Associate
powerHouse Books, 37 Main Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Tel: 212-604-9074 x118, Fax: 212-366-5247, email: nina@powerHouseBooks.com

© Copyright 2011 powerHouse Books