Politics Unseen: Group f.64 Photography and the Problem of PurityIn Politics Unseen, Ellen Macfarlane radically reframes the "pure photographs" of California art photography society Group f.64, known for depicting Western landscapes, fruits and vegetables, flowers, and faces. By foregrounding f.64 members’ and their prints’ alliances across commercial, political, and artistic domains, the book shatters entrenched understandings of the group as disinterested in contemporary events and unseats conceptions of its prints as icons of modernist purity. Instead, Politics Unseen argues the politics of f.64’s photographs become visible when interwar ideas about "purity" in the areas of eugenics, racial essence, nutrition, colonialism, and horticulture are interrogated. Ultimately, Politics Unseen alters perceptions not only of f.64, but also of what constituted a political image in 1930s America. |
Contents
Group f 64 and the Limits of Political Photography | 21 |
2 | 61 |
The Politics of Edward Westons Pure Food Photogra | 111 |
Notes | 201 |
Bibliography | 227 |
List of Illustrations | 249 |
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Politics Unseen: Group F.64 Photography and the Problem of Purity Ellen Macfarlane Limited preview - 2025 |
Common terms and phrases
2024 Imogen Cunningham aesthetic African Americans American Art Angeles Ansel Adams Archive Balog bananas BANC MSS C-B Bender Berkeley Black Americans BOTANICAL PHOTOGRAPHS Brett Weston Brooklyn Museum Camera Craft Carmel Carqué Center for Creative CHAPTER Chicago Colony Communist Consuelo Kanaga Courtesy www.ImogenCunningham.com Creative Photography cultural Daybooks depicts Dorothea Lange Dune Forum Edward Weston EWA CCP exhibition face February FIGURE Film gardens gelatin silver print Getty Group History horticultural human Huntington Library Ibid images Imogen Cunningham Imogen Cunningham Trust Indigenous journal Klallam labor Lovell Magazine McDaniels McDaniels's Modern Art Moholy-Nagy natural Noël Sullivan November NSP BL UCB Oakland Paul Pepper plants Police POLITICAL PHOTOGRAPHY Politics Unseen PURE FOOD pure photography purity racial radical rock San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco Examiner seeds shot social Spencer Straight Photography Strike Succulent Society Survey Graphic University of California University Press vegetarianism viewer visual Western Worker White Willard Van Dyke York