When I first discovered the Diana camera in the 1990’s there were few places to look for inspiration. That was, until I found the seminal book by Nancy Rexroth titled IOWA. It was difficult to lay hands on a copy as it had been originally published in 197
When I first discovered the Diana camera in the 1990’s there were few places to look for inspiration. That was, until I found the seminal book by Nancy Rexroth titled IOWA. It was difficult to lay hands on a copy as it had been originally published in 1977. But I did find it and the book is now dogeared, from hours of looking and being inspired by the magic that a simple toy camera, in the hands of an artist, could produce. Her poetic, well seen capture of people and places in her life were and are an inspiration to generations of photographers. Forty years after its original publication, IOWA has been reissued by the University of Texas Press, now in a hardcover edition that includes twenty-two previously unpublished images. The photographs are accompanied by a new foreword by Magnum photographer and book maker Alec Soth and an essay by internationally acclaimed curator Anne Wilkes Tucker, “who affirms the continuing power and importance of IOWA within the photobook genre”. New postscripts by Nancy Rexroth and Mark L. Power, who wrote the essay in the first edition, complete the volume.
