A memoir in photographs and texts, A Year in Avignon documents a college study-abroad year in the late 1970s. Author Hans Hickerson observes the local people, places, and culture as an outsider but also as a participant. As we follow his experiences and travels we meet and read about his homestay family, foreign friends, and fellow American students. Themed chapters offer photographs attuned to social context and cultural nuance, and together images and texts chronicle a young person’s study abroad adventure.

Along with its novel choice of subject A Year in Avignon contributes to the contemporary photobook’s dialogue with form through its distinctive image / text narrative technique.

“A sweet book.  At first I thought I might be headed for Godard’s France, but I soon found myself in something closer to Eric Rohmer’s.”    - Robert Adams