Natali, Enrico. New American People by Enrico Natali.

Morgan & Morgan, 1972. [Social documentary portraits by the photographer who with the help of a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship documented America from the 1950s to the early 1970s, when he gave up photography and opened a Zen center in California.] Good without dust jacket. Summary:

New American People (1972), published by Morgan & Morgan, is a seminal photographic monograph by American photographer Enrico Natali. The book features a prominent introductory essay by Hugh Edwards, the influential former Curator of Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago, where this body of work was first showcased in a 1969 solo exhibition.

Though later reissued under the more localized title Detroit 1968, the original volume documents a broader socio-cultural case study of mid-century American life at a critical historical crossroads.

Core Themes & Content

• A View of a Condition, Not a Localization: While every photograph in the collection was captured in Detroit between 1967 and 1970, both Natali and curator Hugh Edwards framed the project as a universal brief on how the American middle class looked and lived. The city serves as a structural microcosm for the entire nation's social landscape during a period of intense political and cultural upheaval.

• The Calm Before the Storm: Captured against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and simmering racial tensions, the imagery documents a fragile moment of relative stability just before the automotive industry's massive decline and subsequent urban deindustrialization. It acts as a poignant time capsule of a prosperous, mid-century industrial metropolis on the precipice of vast transformation.

• An Egalitarian Social Portrait: Natali’s approach is deeply empathetic and expansive, capturing citizens across diverse racial, generational, and economic divides. The monograph balances formal family portraits and high school proms with everyday scenes of Detroiters at work and leisure, including:

  • The Blue-Collar and Corporate Workforces: Machinists, computer mainframe operators, secretaries, beauticians, and waitresses.

  • Public and Domestic Rituals: Storefront window-shoppers, patrons at sporting events, family living rooms, and gallery openings.

New American People stands as a vital masterpiece of post-war documentary photography. Through Natali's lens, the everyday habits and environments of anonymous Detroit citizens are elevated into a profound, haunting portrait of the American Dream on the cusp of an irreversible shift.