Jim Goldberg - Raised by Wolves (First Edition) - 1995

Included in Parr Martin, Badger Gerry, The Photobook: A History II


Rare 1995 first edition in excellent condition


Jim Goldberg has been exhibiting for over 30 years and his innovative use of image and text make him a landmark photographer of our times. He began to explore experimental storytelling and the potentials of combining image and text with "Rich and Poor" (1977-85), where he juxtaposed the residents of welfare hotel rooms with the upper class and their elegantly furnished homes to investigate the nature of American myths about class, power, and happiness. In Raised by Wolves (1985-95), he worked closely with and documented runaway teenagers in San Francisco and Los Angeles to create a book and exhibition that combined original photographs, text, home movie stills, snapshots, drawings, diary entries as well as single and multi-channel video, sculpture, found objects, light boxes and other 3-D elements. "Every year, hundreds of American kids leave the apparent safety and comfort of the family home for an uncertain and frequently dangerous life on the streets of the big cities. As always, Goldberg takes photographs of his subjects and then complements his views with theirs, adding their thoughts from interviews, their handwritten musings on scraps of paper, the snapshots they carry and other relevant pieces of found material. The result is a collaged photobook, rich in incidental material, that emerges as a multi-layered and ambiguous document, resistant to easy generalizations about the motives and incidents that compel the young people featured to take the drastic step of running away [...] This is a hard-hitting and affecting book. Goldberg tries at all time to remain both sympathetic and dispassionate. In this he largely succeeds and Raised by Wolves while sparing us nothing of the grim facts, is refreshingly free of the voyeurism and sentimental prurience that can often accompany such reports from the United States' underclasses" (da Parr & Badger, "The Photobook: A History Volume II").