NEW YORK, NY.- Fact: The income for the top 1% has nearly tripled between 1985 and 2014.

The income disparity in the U.S. is larger than it has ever been, and is still growing.

From 1977 to 1985, Jim Goldberg photographed the wealthy and the destitute of San Francisco, creating Rich and Poor, a gripping visual document that offers an intimate look inside the American dream at both ends of the social scale. It has since become a defining work.

In 1984, the black & white series was exhibited alongside the work of Robert Adams and Joel Sternfeld in the "Three Americans" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Rich and Poor, published the following year by Random House, is now recognized as one of the great photography books of the 20th century.

One of the series' hallmarks is its use of handwritten text incorporated into each portrait: the subjects, photographed in their own environments, were invited by Goldberg to comment on and write directly on the prints. Their observations—from glib to delusional to painful—reveal fears, aspirations, and perceptions with an engrossing frankness that informs the straightforward portraits with a sense of personal struggle and subjectivity.

Out of print since 1985, Jim Goldberg's Rich and Poor is now available in a new Steidl edition that has been completely redesigned and expanded by the artist. Now in hardcover for the first time, the book builds upon the foundation of the original with never-before-published vintage material and an accordion-fold insert of contemporary color photographs taken on the streets of San Francisco’s disparate neighborhoods. Goldberg contrasts the “rich” on one side of the long foldout, with the “poor” on the other, giving palpable testimony to ever-persisting economic differences. With current income disparities between the classes only growing, this new edition of Rich and Poor is timely and more relevant than ever.

Jim Goldberg was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1953. He has been working with experimental storytelling for over thirty years, with major projects including Rich and Poor (1977-85), Raised by Wolves (1985-95), and Open See (2003-present). He joined Magnum Photos in 2002. He has been awarded three NEA grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award (2007), and the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize (2011).