Ben Shahn's New York: The Photography of Modern Times [Hardcover]

Deborah Martin Kao (Author), Laura Katzman (Author), Jenna Webster (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2000

Ben Shahn, renowned painter, muralist, and graphic artist, was also a talented photographer who made documentary street photographs in New York City in the early 1930s. This book is the first to focus on his compelling New York images, showing how he used a camera to comment on many social issues of his day. As a political activist Shahn became interested in newspaper photography as source material for some of his paintings and satires. Soon he was engaged in street photography himself, documenting the working-class and immigrant populations and providing a poignant record of unemployment and poverty during the Depression years. The book considers the immediate social history of Shahn's New York photographs and analyses how his leftist politics and his interest in news photographs and film affected his photographic aesthetic. The authors assert the importance of analysing Shahn's paintings and photographs together, explaining why the connections between the two have been ignored until now. The book reproduces not only Shahn's New York photographs but also his related paintings, prints, and drawings, and an appendix presents documents that speak of the pervasive impact of his photographic work. The book accompanies an exhibition at the Arthur Sackler Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, from 5 February to 30 April; the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., from 10 June to 27 August; the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, from 14 October to 27 January 2001; and the David and Alfred Smart Museum, University of Chicago, from 19 April to 17 June 2001.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

With a desire to promote social justice and a deep compassion for humanity, Shahn (1898-1969) was actively involved in social protests and leftist causes in New York City during the 1930s. Although better known for his paintings, murals, and satirical drawings, Shahn was also a talented photographer, influenced by filmmaking and documentary photography as well as his social concerns. Camera skills learned from close friend Walker Evans enabled Shahn to create candid images--of laborers, immigrants, children, the neighborhoods and storefronts of Manhattan, poverty, and unemployment--that became a potent sociopolitical statement during the Depression years. Over the next year the show will be traveling from the organizing institution, Harvard University Art Museums, to major venues in Washington, New York, and Chicago. The authors, who organized the exhibition, have written illuminating essays demonstrating meticulous scholarship. More than 200 duotones, many that Shahn integrated into his paintings, are brilliantly paired in this publication; an appendix with delightful memorabilia caps the work. A gem for both photography and fine arts collections.
-Joan Levin, MLS, Chicago
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Shahn is the subject of a fruitful reexamination launched by Howard Greenfeld's groundbreaking 1998 biography, which introduced discussion of a forgotten facet of the artist's work, his photographs. Now Kao and her coauthors present an in-depth study of the master draftsman and painter's Depression-era devotion to photography, a passion encouraged by his friend and studio mate, Walker Evans. Shahn took pictures throughout the rural South and Midwest for the Resettlement Administration/Farm Security Administration, but his New York City street photographs, 200 of which are published here, were personal works motivated by the same concerns with justice and compassion that inspired his paintings. Using a small Leica to unobtrusively record what he called the "living theater" of the city sidewalks, Shahn deftly captured the poignancy, irony, and humor of urban life. Through its fine reproductions and three illuminating and historically significant essays, this superb volume, the companion to a traveling exhibition, reveals the keenness of Shahn's eye and the power of his vision. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Art Museums (May 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300083157
• ISBN-13: 978-0300083156
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 9.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,231,806 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What photographs!, May 25, 2000

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This review is from: Ben Shahn's New York: The Photography of Modern Times (Hardcover)

Wonderful images and excellent catalogue of Ben Shahn's 1930s photographs.

Exhibition currently on display at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC.