Newman, Arnold. Faces USA by Arnold Newman.

Amphoto, 1978. Foreword by Thomas Thompson. [Based on a photo competition for the prototypical American face, Arnold Newman went out and took pictures of the winning subjects. In an appendix, this book also includes the photos of the faces submitted by the amateurs.] Near fine, hard cover with VG protected dust jacket that is chipped at one corner. Small red remainder mark at top of text block. Summary:

aces USA (published in 1978 by Amphoto / American Photographic Book Publishing) is a compelling, highly stylized monograph by the celebrated pioneer of environmental portraiture, Arnold Newman. Commissioned as a major visual project to celebrate the American Bicentennial era, the volume departs from Newman's famous portfolio of world-renowned celebrities to construct an expansive, democratic portrait of the ordinary people who comprise the United States.

Core Content & Conceptual Framework

1. A Democratic Mosaic of the American Public

The foundational premise of the book is a deliberate subversion of Newman's traditional subject matter. Instead of focusing on cultural titans, politicians, or world-class artists, Newman turns his camera toward a sweeping cross-section of everyday citizens. The monograph functions as a vast sociological registry, documenting Americans across a wide spectrum of professions, ages, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds—from steelworkers and farmers to store clerks, children, and indigenous communities.

2. Adaptation of Environmental Portraiture

The book showcases Newman's ability to apply his signature technique of environmental portraiture to the working class and everyday citizens. The compositions place subjects directly inside their daily workspaces, domestic fields, or urban neighborhoods. The physical artifacts, tools, architecture, and personal belongings surrounding each individual are treated with the same meticulous compositional weight that Newman famously afforded to intellectuals, transforming the everyday spaces of American labor into highly structural, biographical backdrops.

3. Structural Geometry and Form

The publication highlights Newman's lifelong obsession with formal abstraction and rigorous spatial geometry. Even when working in varied, unpredictable on-location settings across the country, Newman utilizes the existing graphic lines of the American landscape—such as fences, factory windows, storefronts, and architectural beams—to precisely frame his subjects. This emphasis on form ensures that each portrait functions simultaneously as a deep human document and a tightly controlled exercise in photographic modernism.

Published during the reflective aftermath of the United States Bicentennial, Faces USA stands as a unique, populist chapter within Arnold Newman's legendary body of work. By granting everyday working-class Americans the same formal dignity, compositional complexity, and psychological depth typically reserved for the world's elite, the monograph remains an essential historical touchstone of late-twentieth-century American humanist photography.

Note:  American portrait photographer Arnold Newman was born on March 3, 1918, in New York. Newman grew up in Atlantic City, then studied art at the University of Miami. He opened the Arnold Newman Studios in New York in 1946 and soon began photographing celebrities, including composer Igor Stravinsky with an open piano cover shaped like a huge musical note. Newman’s “environmental portraiture” became his signature style, in which he carefully posed his subjects with the contents of their homes or work environment in a way that symbolized what that person was known for.  Among his innumerable sitters were Piet Mondrian, Madame Helena Rubinstein, Duane Michals, Robert Moses, Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol, John F. Kennedy, Andrew Wyeth, Mickey Mantle, Grandma Moses, Geoffrey Holder, Eugene O’Neill, and Georgia O’Keeffe. After a long and successful career, Newman died in 2006.