The Ojai Post

If you read magazines, books, advertisements, newspapers, calendars, surf the web, watch television, or buy CD’s or post cards, you've probably seen images photographed by Sohm. His images appear in National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, CNN, ABC, the History Channel, on best-sellers including John Grisham’s King of Torts, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Bill Clinton’s My Life, in American embassies around the world, in the National Archives of the U.S., and in advertisements for most of the Fortune 1000 corporations. His images are published more than 10,000 times a year worldwide.

Sohm began as a classroom teacher of U.S. history and soon turned his photography hobby into a career and vehicle for telling the history of America to a wider audience. Thirty years ago he asked, “How do you photograph democracy?” Since then he has been traveling and taking tens of thousands of photos, 1,300 of which are compiled in his new tabletop book, Visions of America - Photographing Democracy. It is a fifty-state portrait of America, examining multifarious facets of the US - its promise, challenges and accomplishments. Included, incidentally, are several shots taken in our own back yard. Paul Theroux, the legendary travel writer, wrote the foreword. Already the book has been honored with a Gold Medal in the 13th annual Independent Publishing Awards competition as “Best CoffeeTable Book

Now we in Ventura County have a chance to view Sohm’s images on the big screen. Music videos incorporating his photos will be projected onto the screen of the Ojai Theater while Sohm describes his experiences of three decades photographing America. The theatre event, a benefit for the Ojai Valley Museum, begins at 4:30pm on Saturday, December 5, 2009 at the Ojai Theatre, 145 E. Ojai Avenue.

Immediately following will be a celebration and book signing at the nearby Ojai Art Center, 113 S. Montgomery St., featuring American fare catered by The Event Caddy and musical entertainment by Los Angeles musician Maurice Weiss. And there will be door prizes! Tickets are $55 before November 25 and $65 thereafter. Prepaid reservations are required and are available by calling the museum at 640-1390 before December 1.

Additional website information is available at: http://www.ojaivalleymuseum.org/ and http://www.visionsofamerica.com.