Product Description

The American family has undergone dramatic changes in the last two generations, as interfaith and interracial marriage, new gender and age configurations, and different roles have created increasingly complex emotional and spiritual bonds. In The Spirit of Family, Al and Tipper Gore chart this evolution in an entirely fresh way, with 260 black-and-white and color images from many of the countrys most acclaimed photographersincluding Tina Barney, Mitch Epstein, Lee Friedlander, Sally Mann, Mary Ellen Mark, Nicholas Nixonand from rising stars such as Gerald Cyrus, Arlene Gottfried, and Jennette Williams. The result is a visual narrative that brilliantly illustrates the traditional stages of life and the unique challenges and opportunities facing todays families. The perfect complement to the Gores equally eye-opening book about family, Joined at the Heart, this astonishing collection of photographs offers a powerful vision of our most essential relationships.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #576566 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-08
• Released on: 2002-11-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Complemented by a three-page introduction and a smattering of quotes from John Milton, Plato and others, this impressive collection showcases more than 250 photographs of contemporary American families, taken by the likes of Nan Goldin, David LaChapelle, Sally Mann and Nicholas Nixon. The so-called spirit of these images ranges from heartbreaking to smile inducing. Al and Tipper have arranged the photographs by theme (e.g., photos of farming families, families at mealtime, couples reading the paper, parents smoking around children, white children with black nannies, etc.). Without explanations, some are confusing, e.g., two little girls-one white, one black-stand side-by-side in their bathing suits. Are they sisters? Cousins? Friends? Yet this approach allows the more complex work here to maintain its socio-sexual zing. A nervous-looking bride walks through a park with her fiance, while a couple sits on a nearby park bench, kissing. A trio of pudgy adults smiles as they dig into a meal of ribs, corn on the cob and Diet Pepsi. Teens mourn over the casket of a classmate. A laughing woman sprays a young girl with a garden hose. A family of four stands at a busy intersection in Manhattan, underneath a Calvin Klein billboard showing an underwear-clad hunk. The book includes families from all walks of life and potential voting demographics-and it is oddly successful at describing the beauty and awkwardness of family in its current incarnations, including same-sex couples. The ambient tolerance, plus a few less-than-clothed figures, may provoke responses from a variety of camps.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This book begins with an excellent objective-to portray the dramatic changes in the American family over the past two generations-and the Gores did a fine job of selecting and arranging an outstanding collection of photographs. The 260 color and black-and-white images are by some of the finest contemporary photographers in North America, including Sally Mann, Mary Ellen Mark, Tina Barney, Mitch Epstein, Lee Friedlander, and Nicholas Nixon. However, the book consists almost entirely of these loosely strung-together photographs, with only brief, informal comments by the authors buried among the early pages and occasional, distracting snippets of quotes. Not a single photograph is captioned, and the fine photographers are credited only in the small print at the end of the volume. The publisher sees this volume as an excellent complement to the Gores' recent Joined at the Heart, but other than the concept of family, no substantive connection is apparent. Carefully selected and beautifully reproduced, the photographs are nothing short of brilliant. Yet so many questions go unasked and so many issues are not addressed that one is left disappointed. For comprehensive collections.
--Raymond Bial, Parkland Coll. Lib., Champaign, IL
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Al Gore is the former Vice President of the United States and author of the New York Times bestseller Earth in the Balance. During twenty-five years of public service, he has made the family a priority by fighting for programs and policies that are responsive to the needs of families and communities.

Tipper Gore has served as adviser to the President on Mental Health Policy and was special adviser to the Interagency Council on the Homeless during her husband's years in the White House. She worked as a photojournalist for the Tennessean; Picture This, a collection of her photographs, was published in1996. Her first book, Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society, was published in 1987.

Together, the Gores have organized an annual two-day forum called "Family
Re-Union," now in its eleventh year. They have four children and two grandchildren, and live in Nashville, Tennessee.

Customer Reviews

Very powerful
I despise both the Republican and Democratic party, and I didn't vote for Al Gore in the last presidential electoral farce, but I must admit I was taken aback by the collection of photos he and his wife, Tipper, assembled in this book. Their authorship is little misleading, however, for they're only editors--not photographers--pulling together--with the help of photographers--a vast array of works by numerous skilled and apparently hardworking camera artists and workers.

Few photo books show the diversity of the human project as this one. The Gores dare to include images a gay couple, of an interracial relationship, of the everyday poverty lived throughout the front and backyards of this country--of the old and the young, the sick and the afflicted, the violent and the peace makers, the believers and the doubters, the workers and their children, the faces and bodies of a cultural mosaic that makes up the republic.

The images are rugged, urbane, rural and rustic in tone. They provide a voyeuristic look into the homes of people we can't see on t.v. or People magazine. Some of them are so personal that we wonder what they mean, but others only mirror the human condition--the living and loving, the believing and doubting, the holding ourselves together despite our frayed existence.

These are not wholesome, American pie photos. They break the media codes of slick Hollywood images or stereotypes of family. Seen together, the collection gives off a truer meaning what is family, of how, as the Gores contend, "families are changing." So for me, no one particular photo stands out, even though the individual works of Sylvia Plachy, Nicholas Nixon, Lauren Greenfield, Laura Staus, Eli Reed, and Arlene Gottfried, convey a particular style and depth.

I also particularly like the point the editors make in their introduction, that "America's finest photographers have long believed that the greatest subject for their craft is not wars or the dramatic events of history, but the way people interact with one another--how they touch; how they hold their children in their arms; how they get through the day with all the stress, strains, and joys that life hands them; how one generation relates to the next." This is in part what I call the human project. And what better way to capture it than with photography.
...

The Spirit of Family
This is a very moving book. Who would think a picture book could be so telling. The Gores should be congratulated for documenting families is such a creative, insightful way. This book is a keeper!

Worth a Thousand Words
It's been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and this book proves it. The Gores have said they went through fifteen thousand photographs before choosing the ones they've included, and they've come up with some real winners. One of the cleverest, on P.62, shows a baby clutching a bottle against her face while a business-suited man sits on a nearby bed, clutching a cell phone in almost the same position. For emotional impact, I've seldom seen a photograph comparable to one by Alex Webb on P. 182, which shows a mother tending to her baby on a rooftop. In the background is the lower Manhattan skyline,almost blocked out by the smoke and ash of September 11th. Although the book is expensive, this picture and others make it well worth the price.