Gary Gladstone

In the 1960's, I was a photojournalist and commercial photographer making images for LIFE, LOOK and the Saturday Evening POST. I wrote comedy for late night television and produced and distributed jazz records. I moved on to author eleven books mostly featuring photography. My two most recent projects are two coffee table books containing portraits of Americans living in zany-named places.

In 2003 "Passing Gas And Other Towns Along The American Highway" (Ten Speed Press) was published, followed by the sequel, "Reaching Climax And Other Towns Along The American Highway." Collectively, they contain 110 portraits of people who live in absurdly named real towns like Stinking Point and Tight Squeeze, Virginia, Dickshooter and Good Grief, Idaho. I found people in Toad Suck, Arkansas, Gas, Kansas, Climax, Minnesota and Tightwad, Missouri.

To get to these towns I drove 80,000 miles and wrote daily journals about the people I met and how the towns got their names. The journals became the text portion of these two Americana picture books.

I knew I was a pretty good picture-maker but was surprised by the radio, newspaper and magazine reviewers who commented on the quality of the writing.

After thirty-five years and 7 million miles of exhausting professional career travel, I decided to give up the road and picture-making and continue telling stories from a comfortable chair at a keyboard next to a picture window in the woods.

I gave up my cameras and the highway to begin writing memoirs of my delinquent and sometimes criminal childhood. Visiting my past is a lot like popping into strange towns and discovering funny stories.