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SWEET EARTH: EXPERIMENTAL UTOPIAS IN AMERICA - SIGNED BY JOEL STERNFELD
(STERNFELD, JOEL). Sternfeld, Joel. Gottingen, GERMANY: Steidl, 2006. First Edition Thus. Oblong 4to. Cloth in Pictorial Dust Jacket. Photography Monograph. Fine/Fine. np (136pp), 60 color illustrations. Designed by Steidl Design / Bernard Fischer. With a bibliography. "In the years between 1810 and 1850, hundreds of secular and religious societies bravely tried to build a "perfect" life for their members. In the twentieth century experimentation began again, reaching a fever pitch in the turbulent days of the Vietnam War. Some of the late 1960s communes still survive and continue to flourish. The 1990s and the early years of the new millennium have become yet another hotbed of social experimentation. The Co-Housing movement is sweeping America with at least seventy communities fully completed and occupied and numerous others planned. At the same time, the rapid global expansion of sustainable communities known as Ecovillages has been widely adopted in America. Joel Sternfeld has selected sixty representative historic or present American utopias, and a photograph of each is accompanied by a brief text that summarizes the most salient aspects of the history or organization of the community. Neither a conventional history nor a conventional book of photography, "Sweet Earth" brings together what might otherwise seem disparate, individualized social phenomena and makes visible the community of communities. As laissez-faire market forces sweep the globe and the earth's future seems endangered, the dream of living in concert with nature and with one another is increasingly essential". A brand new, most handsome example of the 2006 first Steidl printing of this lovely, thought-provoking volume additionally BOLDLY SIGNED "Joel Sternfeld" in black ink on the title page. 3-86521-124-0 Inventory Number: 020095