Book Review: 'Steve Schapiro: American Edge' (2012)

People talk about the '60s in shorthand — as if the entire decade could be neatly wrapped up with a bow. But in Steve Schapiro: American Edge, Schapiro's camera shows a far more complex portrait of the times. Like Walker Evans in the Depression-era dust bowl, Schapiro's perceptive eye chronicled our national soul in flux. Capturing both the decade's breathless optimism (Jackie Kennedy, young couples necking under the Coney Island boardwalk) and its dark flip side (segregationists, back-alley smack addicts), these 90 black-and-white prints are a reminder that the '60s were less about peace and love than Jekyll and Hyde. A-