Omaha Sketchbook

In this new edition of Omaha Sketchbook, Gregory Halpern returns to his lyrical yet equivocal account of the American heartland. Compiled over fifteen years of photographing Omaha, Nebraska, the book forms a prescient meditation on America, the men and boys who inhabit it, and the mechanics of aggression, inadequacy, and power. In loosely collaged spreads that reproduce his construction-paper sketchbooks, Halpern takes pleasure in dissonance and unexpected harmony, playing on a sense of simultaneous repulsion and attraction to the place. Halpern has significantly altered the first iteration of the book with a new cover and thirty-five previously unseen photographs, breathing life into his original notion that this project is a working sketchbook he will return to and revise periodically.

For the last fifteen years, Gregory Halpern has been photographing in Omaha, Nebraska, steadily compiling a lyrical, if equivocal, response to the American Heartland. In loosely-collaged spreads that reproduce his construction-paper sketchbooks, Halpern takes pleasure in cognitive dissonance and unexpected harmonies, playing on a sense of simultaneous repulsion and attraction to the place. Omaha Sketchbook is ultimately a meditation on America, on the men and boys who inhabit it, and on the mechanics of aggression, inadequacy, and power.