Primarily New Hampshire: A Year in the Lives of Presidential Campaign Staffers in Photographs & Words

Meryl Levin and Will Kanteres

Third Rail Press, 224 pages, soft cover, $35

www.primarilynewhampshire.com

Every four years political history is made in New Hampshire, when the state plays host to some of our country's most influential political figures. Who can forget the powerful images of Ronald Reagan protecting his microphone during a New Hampshire debate with the first President Bush? Or the campaign-ending image of a snow-covered Edmund Muskie seemingly crying on the steps of The Union Leader Building in Manchester?

Comparatively little is written of the armies of mostly young people from all across the country who leave their lives and join forces with the candidate of their choice. They come as operatives, volunteers and foot soldiers.

In "Primarily New Hampshire," two residents-social documentary photographer Meryl Levin and political activist Will Kanteres-team up to put together a truly unique look at the grassroots movement that fuels the New Hampshire Primary.

In spending over a year following more than 30 mostly young campaign workers engaged in the 2004 primary, Levin and Kanteres captured the spirit, passion and hope that is fundamental to what our political process is supposed to be about. Levin's photographs-more than 160 of them, in color-are full of movement and purpose. Her style brings the viewer into her experience and narrates through image the "call to duty" felt by these young worker-bees.

Staffers and volunteers lend their voices to the book, giving the work a feeling of immediacy: words of frustration, elation, exhaustion, depression and, sometimes, reservation ring out powerfully clear as each person's voice is brought into focus by a Levin image or a Kantares summary.

The text encapsulates each phase of the campaign in clear and precise verbiage. Discussing the summer months, still more than two celestial seasons away from the primary election, Kantares writes: "For Meryl and me, these are the halcyon days. Total access, no media cluster, and passionate, congenial participants. It was as if we discovered the world's finest surfing area85. And only a handful of friendly fellow surfers on the beach."

"Primarily New Hampshire" will restore your faith in the political process and make locals proud to be residents of a great and politically important state.