Many readers of this blog share my interest in the lives of Helen and Scott Nearing. This book will be of interest to those same folks. Here is a review I found on the book "Almost Utopia".
Reprinted from Amazon.com
By Elaine Beckwith
Elaine Beckwith Fine Art, Jamaica, Vermont
This review is from: Almost Utopia: The Residents and Radicals of Pikes Falls, Vermont 1950 (Paperback)
The photographs contained in this volume capture a remarkable slice of time in an isolated community on the cusp of change. The pure artistry of these candid shots and the skillful ability of Rebecca Lepkoff, an outsider, to place herself and her camera so unobtrusively before her subjects were remarkable. Rebecca is not present in her photographs: only her subjects, clear, rough-hewn, and strong. These images celebrate the commonplace with freshness and authenticity, frozen in time yet profoundly alive in their moment and, through Rebecca's skill, uncannily alive in our time as well.
The accompanying essay by Nearing scholar Greg Joly places the people, the community and the photographs in historical context. Joly ties the people to place; the rugged character of the land is reflected in the character of the folks who settled in this isolated environment.
This book is interesting on many levels: the artistry of the photographs; the historic association of the "intentional communities" of radicals and others who migrated to the isolation of this Vermont valley; and recognition of the hardscrabble locals who had lived subsistence lifestyles in this rocky landscape for generations.
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