Signed by Neal Slavin

Hardcover: 159 pages

Publisher: Damiani Books

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When Two or More Are Gathered Together (Damiani Books, 2024) is a unique portrait of America and its idealistic underpinnings of individuality and liberty, memorialized in nostalgic photographs from the 1970s. Originally published in 1976 by Farrar Straus & Giroux, this expanded 50th anniversary edition is edited with an essay by Kevin Moore and new group portraits taken over a span of 50 years (1974- 2023).

In the 1970s, photographer Neal Slavin traveled around the United States documenting groups and gatherings. From bingo players to ballroom dancers, bodybuilders to gravediggers, Star Trek conventioneers to religious congregations, Slavin photographed seemingly every imaginable organization that humans have dreamed up. While the pictures themselves are most often posed, Slavin always asks that his subjects arrange themselves in front of the camera, allowing natural hierarchies, group dynamics, and indications of status to emerge.

This expanded 50th anniversary edition of When Two or More Are Gathered Together revisits the question of social unity in the United States at a fraught moment and includes new subjects—such as dogs, fencers, and chambermaids—with some photographed as recently as 2023. The essay by Kevin Moore offers historical context for this timely and relevant body of early color photography.