Irwin Klein and the New Settlers

Photographs of Counterculture in New Mexico

Benjamin Klein

• Publisher: Bison Books
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780803285101
• eBook ISBN:
  9780803285873
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Dropouts, renegades, utopians. Children of the urban middle class and old beatniks living alone, as couples, in families, or as groups in the small Nuevomexicano towns. When photographer Irwin Klein began visiting northern New Mexico in the mid-1960s, he found these self-proclaimed New Settlers—and many others—in the back country between Santa Fe and Taos. His black-and-white photographs captured the life of the counterculture'stransition to a social movement.His documentation of these counterculture communities has become well known and sought after for both its sheer beauty and as a primary source about a largely undocumented group.
By blending Klein's unpublished work with essays by modern scholars, Benjamin Klein (Irwin's nephew) creates an important contribution to the literature of the counterculture and especially the 1960s. Supporting essays emphasize the importance of a visual record for interpreting this lifestyle in the American Southwest. Irwin Klein and the New Settlers reinforces the photographer's reputation as an astute observer of back-to-the-land, modern-day Emersonians whose communes represented contemporary Waldens.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyight Page
• Contents
• List of Photographs
• Foreword
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• From Innocence to Experience: Irwin B. Klein andthe New Settlers of Northern New Mexico
• The Great Hippie Invasion
• El Rito and the Power of Place in Sixties America
• The New Settlers of New Mexico Photographs, 1967– 1971 Introduction
• I. The Valley— Settlement
• II. Independence Day Celebration— The Hog Farm Caravan
• III. The Village— Settlement
• IV. Five Star Commune
• V. Light & Dark
• VI. The Hills
• VII. The Farm
• VIII. Visits
• IX. Wedding Celebration New Buffalo Commune
• Afterword
• Notes
• Contributors