John Vachon’s America: Photographs and Letters from the Depression to World War II"This fascinating book arrives at just the right moment, making a fresh contribution to renewed public and scholarly interest in the New Deal's FSA photography project and its part in the genesis of modern visual culture. Miles Orvell's skillful assemblage of image and word succeeds brilliantly in evoking John Vachon as both gifted photographer and complex man amidst his turbulent times. Vachon's pictures are at once subtle and truthful, and the texts Orvell has written and collected here illuminate the interplay of individual talent, institutional mandate, and popular ideology that powered the FSA's picture making process."—Maren Stange, author of Bronzeville: Black Chicago in Pictures, 1941-1943 "Miles Orvell has created an intriguing picture of a talented, introspective man as he goes about his work as an FSA photographer during the late 1930s and early 1940s. The various parts of the book come together to give us a non-fiction view of the USA and provide insight into documentary photography and the whole FSA project."—Townsend Ludington, author of John Dos Passos: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey and Marsden Hartley: The Biography of an American Artist "In this exciting and provocative book, Miles Orvell addresses an extremely important topic in the history of documentary photography. John Vachon's images and correspondence provide a fascinating counter-narrative to the end of American isolation and the coming of World War II. His writings are a trove of information, written with disarming candor and spiced with lively comments not only on his subjects but on a broad range of cultural issues. Orvell's introductory texts are equally compelling."—James C. Curtis, author of Mind's Eye, Mind's Truth: FSA Photography Reconsidered |
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ADDITIONAL WRITINGS ADDITIONAL afternoon American Ann Vachon April Arthur Rothstein beautiful Ben Shahn Big Hole Basin boys camera Chicago damn Dear Penny documentary Dorothea Lange Dubuque Farm Security Administration feel figure film FSA photographers girl Greenbelt guess hell hope Illinois images Iowa John Vachon July LANDLAKES last night Leica LETTERS TO PENNY Lincoln living look Minnesota Monday morning Morton County mother movie Nebraska never nice North Dakota October Omaha PENNY LETTERS pretty probably Rothstein Roy Stryker Roy Stryker Papers shooting script shots story street stuff Sunday Sweet Cream talk tell Texas things Thursday tires tomorrow tonight took town University of Louisville wait walk Walker Evans Washington week wife wonderful WRITINGS ADDITIONAL WRITINGS yesterday
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Page 9 - James Agee and Walker Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941...