Aperture 88, 1982. Atget, India, Nina Riginsky, Gilles Peress, Robert Adams, Mario Giacomelli, et al.

Very good with small scuff on back cover. Small black spot on front cover at right occurred during printing. Small rubber stamp of previous institutional owner inside front cover. Includes The Work of Atget: Old France, A Review by Jed Perl; Through Indian Eyes by Judith M., Gutman; Personal Portraits by Nina Raginsky; Iran Face to Face, photos by Gilles Peress, essay by Curtis Harnack; Our Lives and Our Children by Robert Adams; Where I Was Meant to Live, photos by Mario Giacomelli, poems by Leonardo Sinisgalli.  Summary:

The 1982 issue of Aperture 88 is a powerful study of the intersection between cultural identity and the passage of time. It juxtaposes the historical preservation of "Old France" and colonial India against the volatile political realities of 1970s Iran and the suburban anxieties of the nuclear age.

Featured Portfolios and Essays

• The Work of Atget: Old France (Jed Perl): A critical review of the Museum of Modern Art’s major retrospective of Eugène Atget. Perl examines Atget’s obsessive documentation of a vanishing Paris and its surrounding countryside, positioning him not just as a documentarian, but as a progenitor of modernism.

• Through Indian Eyes (Judith M. Gutman): This feature challenges Western photographic perspectives by exploring the indigenous photographic traditions of India. Gutman illustrates how Indian photographers in the 19th and early 20th centuries fused traditional painting aesthetics with the new medium of photography to create a unique cultural hybrid.

• Iran Face to Face (Gilles Peress): With an essay by Curtis Harnack, this portfolio presents Peress’s intense, immersive documentation of the Iranian Revolution. The high-contrast, kinetic imagery captures a nation in the midst of a radical identity shift, focusing on the psychological tension of the crowds.

• Our Lives and Our Children (Robert Adams): A haunting series that captures residents in the shadow of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. Adams’s "quiet" photography focuses on the mundane—parents and children in parking lots and grocery stores—to underscore the fragile, invisible threat of the nuclear era.

• Where I Was Meant to Live (Mario Giacomelli): Paired with poems by Leonardo Sinisgalli, this section showcases Giacomelli’s signature high-contrast, lyrical style. His images of the Italian landscape and its people are treated as timeless, mythic visions rather than literal depictions.

• Personal Portraits (Nina Raginsky): Known for her hand-tinted, vintage-inspired portraits, Raginsky’s work provides a whimsical and intimate look at individuals, blending a sense of nostalgia with contemporary character study.

Core Themes

• The Vanishing Past: Both Atget and Gutman deal with the preservation of cultural memory against the tide of modernization.

• Political Upheaval vs. Daily Life: The issue creates a stark contrast between the explosive revolution captured by Peress and the quiet, domestic vulnerability documented by Robert Adams.

• Poetry and Vision: The inclusion of Giacomelli and Sinisgalli reinforces Aperture’s long-standing tradition of merging photography with literature to reach a "higher" subjective truth.

Significance

Aperture 88 is a standout issue for its global reach. By balancing European history, Indian tradition, and the contemporary crises in Iran and the American West, it argues that photography is the primary tool for navigating the complexities of a rapidly changing 20th-century landscape.