Neal Slavin has made photographing groups his specialty and sixty-five of the photos in this book were published in 'When two or more are gathered together' in 1976, they were taken between 1972 and 1975. There are an additional fifty-four photos taken between 1978 and 2023.
It's easy to see why Slavin is considered a master of the group shot. Though nearly all photos have the everyone looking at the camera he places them in their environment. Girl wrestlers are in a ring, workers with the New York Transit Authority are grouped around the front of a subway car, on the track and the platform, four of New York's insect scientists are posed covered in them (I assume they are dead?) the American Society of Dowsers are shown as a reflection in a pool, the DeLorean Car Owners Association are pictured in their cars waving from the open gull-wing doors.
I thought it was a shame that the book's size doesn't really work with these great photos. So many of them are landscapes in an upright book. The original book had very detailed text about each group, these are in the back pages of this book but with no page numbers to find the one you want. The additional fifty-four photos just have the group's name and date. In a more usual size photobook Slavin's work would look tremendous.
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