The goal of this publication is a fully-retrospective presentation of the work of Ray K. Metzker, one of the most important and original American photographers of the second half of the twentieth century. The book, with more than 200 high-quality reproductions, features all aspects of his prolific career of more fifty years which still shows no sign of abating. Well-known and much-exhibited in the United States, Metzker is inexplicably less well-known outside the States. This retrospective survey encompasses the full range of Metzkers brilliant, constantly evolving, formal language. Although Metzker has photographed in Europe on several occasions, he has never felt the need to travel to particularly exotic climes for inspiration. He finds it readily at hand in the neighbourhoods where he has lived principally Chicago and Philadelphia and increasingly in the domain of nature, though the vegetation he depicts in such original form might well be that of a weed-clogged vacant city lot as much as the vast open plains of the American West.