Between 1979 and 1984, Richard Avedon was sponsored by the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, to create a portrait of the American West. Subsequently, he spent some of the summer months travelling through 13 states and 189 towns in the rural West. He conducted 752 sittings as he visited ranches and rodeos, truckstops, oil fields, and slaughterhouses and made portraits of the various men and women who inhabit the interior of the American heartland.

In his foreword, Avedon states: 'A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.'

First English edition; folio (354 x 277 mm, 14 x 11 in); black-and-white photographs, design by Marvin Israel and Elizabeth Avedon; plain endpapers, brown cloth-covered boards, titles stamped on spine and sides in black, photographic reproductions mounted on upper and lower sides, publisher's lightly rubbed acetate dust-jacket with original price sticker on lower panel, near-fine; [174]pp.

The Photobook: A History II, p38.