Life is Good and Good For You in New York: Trance Witness Revels, 1956
Author: William Klein
Publisher: PHOTOGRAPH Magazine, Great Britain
The following is quoted from The Indecisive Moment: The 'Stream-of-Consciousness' Photobook:
"...William Klein's magnum opus, Life is Good and Good For You in New York: Trance Witness Revels, a book with a Beat mantra for a title...was the earlier model, partly because it is less political and more exuberant, and, importantly, because its conception is so complete - photographs, lay-out, design, topography, 'found' ephemera coalescing into what is in effect one of the first great 'POP' books."
"One could argue that not all of the pictures live up to these great images of exuberant kids and suspicious adults, but it is the design and editing that is paramount, and the great model for what was to follow."
"Pictures pile up one after the other, double-page bleeds following two pages of multiple imagery. The book's internal rhythm contains as many cadences, breaks and unexpected flights of fancy as a Sonny Rollins sax solo. New York (also published in the UK and Italy) is a quintessential monument to the American cultural scene of the 1950s in that, like the other art forms of that era, it is supremely about process. It is about the process of making photographs, and about the further process of editing and sequencing them, playing with them and making a coherent statement."
"Klein's masterpiece reminds us that much great, serious art is often about play, achieved simply by experimenting with the possibilities of the material. Forget trance and witness - the revels are the thing."