SCHORR, Collier. There I was.

(Göttingen, Germany): SteidlMack, 2008. First edition. Softcover. 31cm by 24.7cm. Unpaginated. Dedicated to the memory of the charismatic and youthful drag racer Charlie “Astoria Chas” Snyder. At the age of 4 Schorr accompanied her father, an automotive photographer and journalist, to a local race track where she watched Astoria Chas work on his car. A subsequent article followed, with the now eerie headline “While Astoria Chas is doing his thing in Vietnam his friends are racing his L-88.” By the time the article was published, Charlie Snyder had died in action in Vietnam. Drawing upon a layered collision of source materials — including her father’s photographs, Snyder’s own snapshots taken in Vietnam, and appropriated press and reportage imagery — Schorr constructs a fragmented visual narrative tracing an imagined journey from Queens to Vietnam thus transforming Snyder into both an individual subject and a symbolic figure shaped by remembrance and cultural fantasy. A very good copy in card covers with paper dust jacket.