Born Ready. All-American Volume Thirteen

The latest volume in BRUCE WEBER’S ongoing literary and art journal series celebrates individuals whose risk-taking and personal vision set them apart from the crowd. There’s a common enthusiasm running through this volume, a sense that this cast of characters—be they subjects of the book or contributors to it— was born ready to stand up, face the odds, and declare themselves unabashedly to the world.
The book opens with a poem by SHERMAN ALEXIE. A new commission by SEAN THOMAS finds him back in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, documenting the teen rites of passage that pile up at the end of high school: senior prom, first romances, lazy summer jobs. Then Bruce Weber’s first story in the book: a profile of FATHER GREGORY BOYLE, founder of Homeboy Industries, the pioneering Los Angeles based gang intervention and rehabilitation program. From there All-American travels to Harlem with LISA EISNER, whose commissioned story about Amateur Night at the Apollo becomes a love poem to the vibrant neighborhood. Weber’s second story is a profile of the charming and eccentric MICKY WOLFSON, whose extraordinary collection of furniture, paintings, books, prints, and decorative objects became the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami, Florida. A portfolio of paintings by the Palm Beach society fixture RALPH WOLFE COWAN presents everyone from Doris Duke to Johnny Mathis to Princess Grace in the most ethereal and unexpected light. All-American traces one woman’s personal struggle for justice through exclusive images from the personal archive of EDITH WINDSOR, whose Supreme Court case resulted in the overturning of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) earlier this year. This story also features portraits by Bruce Weber and photographs by POPPY DE VILLENEUVE. All-American Volume Thirteen closes with an in-depth look at the world of professional motocross racing. Bruce Weber traveled this summer to Southwick, Massachusetts together with photographers JOHN SCOTT and MICHAEL JOHN MURPHY to capture stars like Ryan Dungey and James Stewart racing against a host of up-an-comers.