"'Oh what a beautiful baby!' 'That's nothing,' replied the mother, 'you should see his photograph.'"

Through text and photography, They Became What They Beheld brings into vivid focus the changed sense of self and world that now marks modern life—most expressively in the young. Why long hair? Why the turn to drugs and the inner trip? But the changes do not only affect the young, they are part of all of us. Why the new, intense concern with fashion? Why the rapid expansion of the old limits of what was "proper"? Why that "gap" that divides the generations?

"'Daddy, are we live or on tape?'"

The book takes the form of a notebook of images and commentaries juxtaposed in dramatic contrasts and continuities. Its rhythms are more concentrated and more violent than those experienced in conventional work. They belong to the world of icon, graffiti, cartoon—our world.