fluoro Giveaway: Rich and Poor

fluoro is giving you the chance to win Jim Goldberg’s title Rich and Poor from German publisher Steidl. The title has recently been re-released after being out-of-print for 25 years.

From 1977 to 1985, Jim Goldberg photographed the wealthy and the destitute of San Francisco, creating Rich and Poor, a gripping visual document that offers an intimate look inside the American dream at both ends of the social scale. It has since become a defining work.

In 1984, the photographic series was exhibited alongside the work of Robert Adams and Joel Sternfeld in the Three Americans exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The series presents handwritten text incorporated into each portrait, with each forming one part of the larger story of American society. The subjects, photographed in their own environments, were invited by Goldberg to comment on and write directly on the prints. Their observations—from glib, delusional to painful—reveal fears, aspirations, and perceptions with an engrossing frankness that informs the straightforward portraits with a sense of personal struggle and subjectivity. The title, Rich and Poor, was published the following year by Random House and is now recognised as one of the great photography books of the 20th century.

Rich and Poor is now available in a new Steidl edition that has been completely redesigned and expanded by the artist. Presented in hardcover for the first time, the book builds upon the foundation of the original with never-before-published vintage material and an accordion-fold insert of contemporary colour photographs taken on the streets of San Francisco’s disparate neighbourhoods. Goldberg contrasts the “rich” on one side of the long foldout, with the “poor” on the other, giving palpable testimony to ever-persisting economic differences.

The income for the top 1% of US wealth has nearly tripled between 1985 and 2014. The income disparity is larger than it has ever been, and is still growing, making the content of this re-released title equally as fitting as when it was first published.