Small Town America

In Plowden's portraits of backwater America--decaying Main Street, general store, blacksmith, farmer--it is the photographer who ascribes significance to his subject through intense selective vision, technical near-perfection and a guaranteed popular response that can be appealed to again and again. Thus the pictures here wrongly may seem simply to have been left out of Plowden's 18 previous books ( Commonplace ) though many are of recent vintage. In a lengthy foreword, he lovingly ticks off a roster of self-reliant hometown people he has known, and nostalgically, almost petulantly, bemoans the now nearly complete surrender of bygone days of horse wagons and railroads to the superhighway's arid malls and condominiums. Plowden fans will be richly rewarded. BOMC dividend selection. (Apr.)