The Invisible Stranger: The Patten, Maine, Photographs of Arturo Patten

The Invisible Stranger: The Patten, Maine, Photographs of Arturo Patten by Banks, Russell. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780060192341.

In this unique collaboration Arturo Patten, one of the most important portrait photographers of our time, and acclaimed writer Russell Banks visit the hardscrabble north country of Patten, Maine, to study its inhabitants. Pattens haunting portraits of the towns residents evoke characters who exist in Russell Bankss fiction. Banks, the author of Cloudsplitter, The Sweet Hereafter, and Affliction, observes Pattens "characters" from his remote cabin in the Adirondack hills of upstate New York, where he surrounds himself with the thirty-seven portraits and contemplates what they tell us about Patten, Maine, about portraiture, and ultimately about ourselves. The Invisible Stranger, therefore, becomes nothing less than a meditation on what it means to be human. By becoming the "invisible stranger" and obscuring himself behind the cameras lens, Patten allows his subjects to emerge and then presents them to the viewer, who, seeing these individuals, also sees himself. Banks, too, acts as the "invisible stranger," studying the townspeople from hundreds of miles away and reflecting on the complex relationships between photographer and subject, subject and observer. Taken together, Pattens portraits and Bankss commentary offer a dramatic and provocative combination of word and image.