LaPorte, Indiana | 
| Author: Jason Bitner
Creator: Alex Kotlowitz
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
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Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 591,251
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 192
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 6.7 x 0.9
ISBN: 1568985304
Dewey Decimal Number: 977.291
EAN: 9781568985305
ASIN: 1568985304
Publication Date: March 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
FOUND magazine editor Jason Bitner has made it a habit of picking up after us, walking down the back alleys of our lives, and accumulating all that we've thrown away or mislaid. One afternoon not long ago, after lunch at a small Midwestern diner, he stumbled onto a forgotten archive. In the back of the restaurant were box upon box of studio portraits of the townspeople of LaPorte, Indiana over 18,000 in total. Taken over four decades, the photos marked important milestones a sailor in uniform, a graduate in cap and gown, a couple newly engaged while others simply made modest attempts at posterity. Each in their unique way reveals both a public and private face, a story untold, a secret to reveal. They are admittedly brief moments and ones in which people have purposefully posed for the camera. Smiling. Caring. Loving. Pensive. Serious. These are pictures of all of us in a way, reflections in a mirror of the everyday moments and events that define all of our lives. LaPorte, Indiana is a major cultural excavation and an opening into these lives, into this town, and into the heart of our nation. "These are real people. The grace and dignity one sees in their faces should be a source of hope for us all."
John Mellencamp
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
 Beauty & simplicity give the reader room to explore February 10, 2006
mike (NYC)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Jason Bitner's LaPorte, Indiana offers a glimpse of the small-town Midwestern personality that is touching in its simple elegance. The layout--one portrait per page, sized to occupy the full page--draws no attention to any one picture, makes no editorial comments designed to influence. Each portrait is given equal status to the others, leaving the reader to draw his own conclusions, intuit what he will about the soundless characters presented within.
This lack of commentary (aside from a brief introduction and forward) is LaPorte, Indiana's second-strongest point, behind the selection of portraits themselves. We are shown what we were never meant to see--castoffs from a portrait studio, the shots that didn't quite make it. Still, we do not have completely candid shots. These are the just-less-than-perfect pictures of people who have presented perfect versions of themselves. This doesn't make them any less true, but the portraits' subjects are editorializing themselves, in a way, and any additional layers of comment by the author would be too much.
The enjoyment and beauty of this collection goes beyond just the subjects, however. Comparisons and juxtapositions arise; the young from one page cascade into the old on another; men and women on facing pages, who may never have met, stare at each other across the book's binding. Beyond the individuals held in this book are the interactions held within it. One can trace a theoretical life through the pictures of the newborn, the youth, the adolescent, the middle aged, and the ederly. The reader can impose, discard, and impose anew themes and groupings on sections of the book, looking for what may connect these people.
Overall, this is a gorgeous work. It's a wonderful preservation of a specific, overlooked bit of America. And it's beautiful way to pass an afternoon, reading it alone or sharing it with friends.
Americana March 16, 2006
Bonnie Gee (Brooklyn, NY)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
I am a huge fan of the Found crew, I find their unironic sentiment, enthusiasm and respect for people's findings to be utterly refreshing.
The format of the book is goregous, the paper stock wonderful and so appealling to either flip through or go page by page to view the juxtopositions the author (or finder?) intended. It is a wonderful "coffee table" book and so intriguing for so many different kinds of people in your life to give as a gift.
I inherited a large box of black and white photographs that my grandfather had left to me at his death years ago. As a 15 year old, shifting through photos of both his life and strangers was emotionally overwhelming. He was an amateur photographer and had made a darkroom from a closet in his suburban PA home. There are so many similar photos of children and women of the photographer of La Porte, Indiana and my own! Yet I am glad to see Jason was able to reproduce that sense of wonder at the joy and oddness of everyday people through the lens of an everyday man.
A gorgeous and compelling book March 17, 2006
Kerri Harrop (Seattle)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Upon your initial flip through this beautiful book, you will immediately understand why photographer Frank Pease didn't have the heart to toss out the treasure trove of portraits that are compiled here.
Lucky for Jason Bitner, whose past exploits at Found and Dirty Found offer proof of his eye for the lost, the forgotten, and the bizarre. Bitner has whittled down the collection of over 18,000 photographs into a fascinating look at the people of Small Town, USA.
While wending through the pages of LaPorte, Indiana, the reader can almost feel the excitement Bitner must have had at finding such an amazing archive. Each page tells a story and that story is only inferred by the brief moment captured on film. It's an incredibly compelling book, filled with images of a time that seems to be lost forever.
Aren't We All From La Porte, Indiana? April 4, 2006
M'Hannah (Michigan, USA)
12 out of 15 found this review helpful
I grew up on Michigan Avenue in La Porte, and went to La Porte High School with the owner of the diner who inherited all those many boxes of black and white photos that so eloquently reveal my town. Every time we visited La Porte, we went to the diner to spend a little time in the back room browsing the boxes, looking for family members, neighbors, grade school friends. Finding someone we knew would evoke a shriek of delight. More often, however, we weren't sure. Was that Pammie's mom and dad, or people we didn't know? Did that guy run the shoe store during the early 60s, or was he someone else? Didn't that girl go to our church? I could tell you that these pictures tell a story of my town. But they tell the story of anybody's town, evoking instantly the feel of the middle of the last century, the slight artificiality of the photographer's studio, the "special occasions" that were at once unique and commonplace. You will look at a young couple and wonder if you knew them. We may all be just ourselves, but we are everybody else, too.
Surprising July 12, 2006
ADAM J. GROVE (Evansville, IN USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I was surprised how such a simple book can be so good. I like to leave it lying around and pick it up every so often and flip through it. Very interesting concencept.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
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