Nothing Personal

About the Book

The Queens recorded in Armand Agresti’s black-and-white photographs from the 1950’s is a mythic place full of hot jalopies, seriously cool cats and girls with beehives that just won’t quit. Mr. Agresti, himself a teen-ager at the time, must have been a bit of a pest to his friends, always hanging around taking pictures. His photographs here evoke a prelapsarian world of sunny, tree-lined streets and slow dancing, a world where thoughts of fallout shelters and segregation were far away. Part of the charm of these photographs is how unpretentious and direct they are, and how self-conscious their subjects are as well. Three teen-age girls pose themselves in the driveway of a white frame house, two with hands on hips in would-be model poses, the third beaming beneath a towering hairdo. The guys, meanwhile, are hanging out on the corner, or posing with their Chevys. Charles Hagen New York Times review Janet Borden Gallery

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