Rochester 585/716: A Postcard from America Project
Texts by Cornelius Eady, Marie Howe, Chris Klatell, Nathan Lyons, and Laura Wexler
Published in collaboration with Aperture Foundation

452 pages | 8 1/2 x 11 inches | 1000 four-color and black-and-white images | Paperback | 978-1-59711-340-3

In 2012, the Eastman Kodak Company declared bankruptcy. That same year, a group of ten photographers from Magnum Photos—Jim Goldberg, Bruce Gilden, Susan Meiselas, Martin Parr, Paolo Pellegrin, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Alec Soth, Larry Towell, Alex Webb, and Donovan Wylie, plus Chien-Chi Chang, who documented the process in audio and video—established a temporary base of operations in Rochester, New York, former home to the once-dominant manufacturer of photographic film. Their goal: to create both a documentary archive of that city’s culture and landscape, and a photo-based experience engaging its residents; and to investigate a community of picture-makers comprised not only of Eastman Kodak, but also the Visual Studies Workshop, George Eastman House, Rochester Institute of Technology, and the citizens of Rochester.

Upon arrival in Rochester, Martin Parr gave each photographer the task of assembling one hundred photographs to form the basis of an archive. Rochester 585/716 presents all one thousand images, together with commentary by poets Cornelius Eady and Marie Howe, art historian and photo theorist Laura Wexler, and photographer and educator Nathan Lyons.

Postcards from America is an ongoing, collaborative project. Since 2011, a loose group of Magnum photographers—including the eleven featured in this volume— has periodically gathered in locations across America to experiment with the notion of working together to create a new documentary archive of the United States.