ALL-AMERICAN XX: COMING HOME Vol.20

To everything, there is a season: a time to remain in place, a time for racial reckoning. A time of conflagration, a time for healing. A time of contagion, a time for hope. Quite a year for this twentieth edition of Bruce Weber’s All-American journal. But if the past two decades have illuminated anything, it’s that the promise of this country—and a journal dedicated to its eclectic tapestry—lies in its struggle and striving.

All-American Volume XX: Coming Home finds Bruce Weber doing what many did as the pandemic kept us home: reflecting on those beliefs and ideals held most dear. While it continues to ask big questions of America, Coming Home is in many ways the most personal edition in this series, celebrating important relationships that have guided Weber’s artistic journey. There’s his long-time collaboration with the model and artist Juan Heredia, who Weber has photographed for over 15 years—and a wide-ranging tribute to Donald Sterzin, the art director whose work help shaped Weber’s early career. Family ties continue to be a central concern, considered this year through an intimate portrait of Martina Navratilova and her wife Julia Lemigova at home with their daughters—and the dramatic story of Miguel Chavez, a DACA immigrant from Peru trying to realize his American dreams. A portfolio of Black Lives Matter protest photos paired with Civil Rights era images starkly highlights our perpetual quest for racial justice, with the educator and activist Jane Elliott offering discomforting insights from her home in Osage, IA. And to remind readers of adventures beyond the horizon when travel becomes possible again, Volume XX presents an in-depth consideration of Eliot Elisofon, a lesser-known but astonishingly prolific LIFE photographer who made the world his home. All-American Volume XX: Coming Home also includes texts by Yousuf Karsh, E.B. White and Alfred Stieglitz.