Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream

Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream

Ralph Steadman is an artist and illustrator, best known for his sardonic, splattery drawing style, and his collaboration with the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson ('Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas', 'Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail', et al). He has also been known to make the occasional photograph, although 'photocollage' might be a more accurate descriptive term. Using the Polaroid emulsion transfer process, Steadman splices images of famous and infamous politicians together to create disturbing, deformed demons whom one might readily imagine stalking the citizenry and sucking the lifeblood from our Constitution. When I first came across a selection of these venomous gems in Steadman's book 'Scar-Strangled Banger' (Salem House, 1988), I recalled how Walker Evans characterized Lee Friedlander's early photographs of TV sets as 'spanking little poems of hate'. indeed. KB