In “The Way It Was,” legendary Magnum photographer Thomas Hoepker juxtaposes two ambitious road trips across the United States, taken nearly sixty years apart. The first journey, commissioned by the German magazine Kristall in 1963, captured a complex, skeptical, and unromanticized view of the American everyday in high-contrast black-and-white. In 2020, at the age of 84, Hoepker set out once again to document the same country in vibrant color. This monograph serves as a profound visual dialogue between past and present, revealing the persistent intricacies of a vast and complicated nation. Edited with text by Freddy Langer, the book captures a quiet lyricism that is both somber and poignant, yet ultimately hopeful, documenting the evolution of the “American Dream” through the lens of one of photography’s most perceptive masters.