Customer Reviews

American Photography 1890-196 5

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I thought this was a remarkable diverse look at seventy-five years of photography. Turn the pages and the history of American imagery unfolds but it isn't a history because all the works come from MoMA. It says a lot for a handful of curators over the decades to have collected thousands of works of which this book displays a thin slice of the total.

Thankfully the selection in the book is fairly broad so as well as the obvious art photography you'll see an example of Arthur Mole's patriotic living picture from 1918, a second World War US Navy photo taken from the deck of the USS Franklin in 1945, a Ralph Bartholomew photo for a 1950 Kodak ad or a news photo of a 1963 race riot in Birmingham, Alabama by Charles Moore. These all reflect the Museum's belief that art should be as democratic as possible.

The index lists ninety-six photographers (plus two from the military and three from unknown sources) with the well known names getting several inclusions: Walker Evans nine, Frank; Lange; Steichen; Strand and Callahan six and the others one or two each. I always like this type of photo book because I can discover photographers I was not aware of. New to me were Ted Croner, Philip Elliott and Louise Dahl-Wolf.

The book's production is what you would expect from MoMA: photos one to a page (and thankfully with a caption centered below); generous margins; well printed 250 screen tritones and duotones. There are in fact five color photos among all the black and whites, one of which is Edward Steichen's amazing Moonrise - Mamaroneck taken in 1904. A nice touch, I thought, in Peter Galassi's essay were the eleven photos of photographers. Just a few of the many creative talents that make the pages of this book sparkle.

***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.