"the myth tells us that America was full of smiling people ... the relevant truth is that the country was settled by a desperate, divided, and rapacious horde of people who were determined to forget their pasts and determined to make money. We certainly have not changed in this respect, and this is proved by our faces, by our children, by our absolutely unspeakable loneliness, and the spectacular ugliness and hostility of our cities."
Nothing Personal Photographs by Richard Avedon. Text by James Baldwin