"Up and Down Peachtree" and "A Natural Order"

One thing both books share is a frustrating lack of text. In the case of Up and Down, the lack of identifying detail simply intensifies Parr's snarkiness, and the design of the book furthers that end too. The volume begins and ends with a few pages of pure color plates, each bearing just one "telling" isolated detail – a shakily hand-lettered placard reading "I <3 My Gay Sons" stripped of the woman holding it; an overflowing garbage can labeled "Keep America Beautiful" minus its context of tidy surrounding fairgrounds. In A Natural Order, Foglia does include a short statement describing his childhood outside the societal norm; it's enough to explain the empathy that radiates from his pictures of people that another photographer might portray as freaks. Clearly both of these photographers are still convinced that a picture expresses more than any words can.

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