Portraits

Tom Lutz is the author of ten books, including the At Home in the World trilogy (Drinking Mare’s Milk on the Roof of the World, And the Monkey Learned Nothing, and The Kindness of Strangers), based on his travel to some 140 countries and territories. His books Aimlessness, Born Slippy, Crying, Doing Nothing, Cosmopolitan Vistas, and American Nervousness, 1903 have been translated into a dozen languages and have won the American Book Award among other honors. He is the founding editor in chief and publisher of Los Angeles Review of Books and a Distinguished Professor at University of California, Riverside. He lives in Los Angeles.

“Portraits is one of those photo books you want to look at again and again, a world tour of humanity, and proof that Tom Lutz is not only skilled with a pen but a camera. To have earned the kind of trust that enabled him to make such revealing portraits, in such disparate cultures, is no small thing.”—Judith Freeman, author of The Long Embrace and The Latter DaysPraise for Tom Lutz"A smart and propulsive wild ride from the genteel mansions of Hartford Connecticut to the more louche corners of Asia. Lutz's debut is a technicolor noir, a smart, literary and literate thriller—like love child of Elmore Leonard and Graeme Greene. Original and deft and not to be missed."—Ivy Pochoda, author of Wonder Valley and Those Girls“To read And the Monkey Learned Nothing is to experience the thrill of visiting new places coupled with the pleasure of personal and cultural reflection. The sensitivity and moral intelligence that Tom Lutz brings to his writing allows us to discover the unity to be found in our wondrously diverse world.”—Laila Lalami, author of The Moor’s Account, finalist, Pulitzer Prize for FictionOne would assume that Tom Lutz, esteemed head of a university creative writing department and patriarch of a West Coast cultural journal, lives in a world built of words. But when he morphs into a serial solo vagabond he is a rapt visualist stalking the killer image, and his primary prey is the human face. His book of photographs transports you to virtually every corner of earth, not to take in scenery or local treasure but to meet — emotionally, poetically — the people with whom we share a planet. The tour he gives us is mesmerizing, and in infinite ways. How uncanny a seducer he must be to have won so many over to submit to his camera’s loving gaze, and with such alacrity. In the bracing close-up encounters of Portraits, Lutz renders humanity as a beguiling family album.