New American People

Enrico Natali’s Detroit 1968 was first published in 1972 under the title New American People, a photography series of everyday people at work and at home in urban America, having been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1969 as New American Life. In his introduction to the 1972 edition, Hugh Edwards, former Curator of Photography at that Chicago institute:

“All the photographs in the present collection were taken in 1967–1970 in Detroit, which in no way restricts their presentation as a brief of how Americans look and live today. These scenes and incidents might have occurred anywhere in the United States in this time when regional characteristics are disappearing … this is a view of a situation and condition, not a localization.”

Here we look at Natali’s pictures of groups – the city’s tribes, determined by fashion, rank and race – which from the prom goers to the upper-class whites and the business chiefs speak of belonging and hint at exclusion in a once prosperous city. source: flashbak.com