A Photographer’s Paradise in America

Soon after arriving in New York in the mid-1960s, Jean-Pierre Laffont discovered that — unlike anywhere else — his new neighbors respected him and his profession.

via Lens Blog: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/a-photographers-paradise-in-america/

Jean-Pierre Laffont’s America is a land of poverty, corporate greed, racism and violence. But it is also a land of optimism where hard work, sheer will and following your dream can lead to almost anything. It is so vast that it can contain both the quiet desperation of fifth-generation farmers struggling to remain on their family land and the hopes of a new immigrant searching for a better life.