George Tice: Selected Photographs, 1953-1999

From Booklist
For those who already know his work, thinking of Tice as a neglected master is, well, unthinkable. Fields of Peace (1970; rev. ed., 1998), his first book, with text by Millen Brand, is the finest single work about the Amish, and Tice's photos in it have acquired iconic status. This little showcase of Tice's own favorites from throughout his career does, however, make one wonder why his name isn't as well known as those of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Edward Steichen. Photographing rural and urban, intimate and panoramic subjects equally skillfully, Tice produces supremely composed pictures, in that they are both sublimely still and exquisitely arranged. Undergirding each of them is, characteristically, a simple structural form--a cross, a curve, or a couple of either. These forms respectively anchor or hold a picture's subject with obvious warmth: note how a car fender "shelters" a drunk passed out on a Bowery sidewalk, how the branch of a tree "protects" a rusting old tractor in a New Jersey field. Although Tice's pictures often have a reassuring quality, he doesn't mind being disquieting, as in the astonishing "Water Tower, Rahway, New Jersey, 1994," in which either the tower looms behind a huge tree or the tree is devouring the tower, and as in the de Chirico-Magritte dream Tice found on the side of a furniture store in Portland, Maine. Ray Olson
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The enduring work of photographer Tice (b.1938, New Jersey) is represented here in 80 carefully selected b&w images, beautifully presented in a small format book (5.75x8). David Godine provides the only texta foreword that celebrates the craft and vision of this master photographer. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)


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