Grey Villet traveled America and the world for LIFE magazine like an observant explorer, mapping its emotional contours in the faces and lives of its people. His in-depth, personal studies of the American scene of the 1950s through the 1970’s illuminated the complex reality of those years with a truth that, in his own words, were “as real as real could get.”
Essay: Storytelling With Pictures – Lens Blog – NYTimes.com:
I was nine years old, living in a small town in south Florida, when I read Grey Villet’s “The Lash of Success” in Life magazine — one of the very few extras my family could afford. The pages of Life were filled with images of President John F. Kennedy, the space program and rising stars of television. Yet it was the subject and style of “Lash” — about a businessman sacrificing his humanity in pursuit of success — that had the greatest impact upon me. I have never forgotten it.