Bound for Glory: America in Color 1939-43 [Hardcover]

Paul Hendrickson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2004

Between the years 1935 and 1942, a vast number of images of America were taken by photographers hired by the Farm Security Administration (FSA). The FSA had been established as a relief organization in order to help rural Americans out of poverty and into economic self-sufficiency and prosperity. The charge of the photographers was to document the people and places the FSA had set out to help. In 1942, the FSA's photography unit was transferred to the Office of War Information (OWI), whose primary purpose was to document America's mobilization during the early years of World War II, concentrating on such topics as aircraft factories and women in the workforce. Today, this collection of photographs consists of about 108,000 images, among them some of the most famous black-and-white documentary images from the first half of the twentieth century. Yet few people know that, along with the vast number of black-and-white photographs taken, color images were also made, by photographers such as Marion Post Walcott, Russell Lee, John Vachon, Arthur Rothstein, and Andreas Feininger. This book presents, for the first time, the best of these color photographs - introduced by National Book Award finalist Paul Hendrickson and assembled to create a vivid portrait of America as it emerged from the Great Depression and prepared to fight World War II.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Thanks to famous documentary photographs of Americans during the Great Depression, we tend to visualize everything that happened in the 1930s in black-and-white. In fact, Kodachrome first became available in the U.S. in 1935, and several photographers for the Farm Security Administration experimented with the new color film as they traveled across the country. Bound for Glory: America in Color 1939-43 presents an oddly startling world of small towns and country roads ablaze in the vivid hues of real life. A sunburned family in Pie Town, New Mexico, eat a dinner of homemade biscuits, grits, and gravy. Sisters wearing print dresses all made from the same rose and blue fabric seem dazed at the wonders of a state fair in Vermont. Work horses graze on bright green grass under a moody Kansas sky. Chosen from an archive of about 1,600 vintage color slides, the 175 photos in the book are the work of several documentary photographers, including Marion Post Wolcott and Jack Delano. Partway through this panorama of Americana, the tone and subject matter shift. Suddenly, the U.S. is at war, and the casual, unposed quality of the earlier images shifts into self-conscious glorification of the American war effort by the Office of War Information, with shots of steel mills and train yards, and of women newly hired by factories to assemble bomber parts. It's clear from Paul Hendrickson's engaging introduction that the pre-war images are the ones he finds most captivating. This slender volume--which aptly borrows the title of Dustbowl troubadour Woody Guthrie's autobiography--offers a window on a distant era in which grinding poverty and racial segregation coexist with the simple pleasures of rural and small-town life. —Cathy Curtis

From Publishers Weekly

Taken from 1939 to 1943 under the auspices of the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information, these 175 "lost" photos feature shots by Russell Lee, Andreas Feininger and Marion Post Wolcott, using the then-revolutionary technology of Kodachrome film. Color photographs taken before 1939 have largely deteriorated, so these surviving photos are later than the most familiar b&w Depression-era shots. This 11¾"×8½" volume thus "colorizes" one's normally black-and-white impressions of a very vibrant time, as Hendrickson (Sons of Mississippi) notes in his introduction. The logic behind the arrangement of the photos, which at first seems largely random, as it follows neither photographer, location nor chronology, becomes clear by the end of the book: the U.S.'s industrial rise. Images of urban lethargy and farmhands picking cotton under hot blue skies (the unbearable conditions of cotton-picking somehow seem more apparent in color) gradually give way to images of mobility, mechanization and a changing economy. Arnold T. Palmer's gleaming portraits of Rosie the riveter–like aircraft workers follow Jack Delano's earthier photos of male railroad workers, their sweaty and intent faces caked with soot. Tellingly, the book ends with photos of bombers flying over California.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Abrams (May 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810943484
• ISBN-13: 978-0810943483
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #807,211 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 40 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Eyepopping November 28, 2004

By Danusha V. Goska

Format:Hardcover

The average modern citizen in the West is awash in images.

This was brought home to me when I was teaching in a small village in Nepal. I was told not to use photographs or even drawings in class because Nepali villagers, who haven't seen many or even any photographs, might not know how to visually decode them. (FTR: I did use visual aids, and my students did learn to decode them.)

The average modern American is very different. We are so inundated by images that we can walk by an exquisite Ansel Adams print or a map of horror like Picasso's "Guernica" and not see or feel anything.

My American students have to be taught, not how to to decode photographs, but how to get in touch with their own response to photographs -- to learn that images of violence or sexual exploitation do have an impact, an impact they've been taught to ignore.

When a photography book, from its front cover to its last page, grabs me and doesn't let me go, when I can feel a photography book reach into my visual cortex and move around the furniture, I know that that photography book is something special.

"Bound for Glory" did just that.

E. H. Gombrich, in his book "Art and Illusion," talks about "schemata," or visual formulas that limit how artists can represent the world, and, thus, how consumers of art can view the world, in any given era.

As I gazed at "Bound for Glory's" images, I could feel my "schemata" being set in motion as if they had been wallflowers at a dance, and this book got those "schemata" up and dancing around, assuming positions they'd never assumed before.

The 175 photos span an era from the late 1930's to the early 1940's. I did not live through that era, but my parents did, and I have spent many an hour gazing at their black and white photos of that era.

Too, I am a classic movie fan, so I've spent hours watching and rewatching films like "It Happened One Night" and "The Grapes of Wrath" that depict the same world this book depicts: that of small town American life.

When I first opened this book of COLOR photographs from the 1930s and 1940s, I thought, "This is WRONG."

Now, I know that that reaction is factually incorrect. I know that people in the thirties and forties had pink, beige, and brown skin, blue or brown eyes, red dresses. But because I've been so trained by the family photos and classic films of that era to expect black and white, the color of these photographs completely messed with my head.

The people looked too real. My contact with them felt too intimate.

That effect has not, as yet, worn off. I've gone through the book several times and the rich, lovely, saturated colors still shock me. The chipped red nails of the homesteader wife. Her clashing yellow flowered apron and blue flowered dress. Her blond hair. Wow.

Color is not the only reason to appreciate this book. The photographs are well-lit and well composed. They are amazingly clear. You see strands of hair, shoe straps, bruises, facial expressions, clearly. Really, it's as if you bought a ticket on a time machine and walked into a church service, or a country fair, from decades ago.

You see that very poor Americans from that era had not yet become obese. A crowd of wonderfully dressed African American women gather outside a church; each is as slim and strong looking as an athlete. In a gaggle of white homesteader kids, not one is overweight.

You see that very poor Americans from that era put much effort into grooming. A white homesteader man wears a white shirt that is quite filthy, but he has tucked it into his pants; he wears a hat at a jaunty angle. An African American boy in overalls also wears a hat; his shirt is buttoned up properly. Someone put a great deal of care into his appearance, even though the clothes he wears are evidently old.

You see the creeping "uglification" of America in billboards and industrial sites.

You see resignation and quiet disgust on the face of one girlie-show dancer, and goofy eagerness on the face of another. You see how we permed our hair sixty years ago.

I love this book. I can't recommend it highly enough.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The color of memory June 13, 2004

By Robin Benson

Format:Hardcover

In Paul Hendrickson's introduction to this wonderful book he suggests that many people (including himself) sort of believe the Great Depression existed only in black and white. I'll agree with him because having collected a few dozen books devoted to FSA photos it is strange to see color photos taken by the same small group of brilliant photographers who took thousands of monochrome images that defined the Nation's view of the Depression. He also mentions the important observation that most color photos used in print media at the time were for decorative or flamboyant editorial use, in other words color for colors sake and of course color was used extensively for advertising.

With 175 photos the book starts with an FSA view of the countryside and then merges into urban, city and railroad shots and finally images of war production, mostly dealing with aircraft. I don't think the last photos have the emotional punch of the earlier FSA work, they seem more photos of record. Of the FSA section of the book (with sixty or so photos) there are eighteen beautiful shots by Russell Lee taken in Pie Town, New Mexico, he had already taken many photos here, which are now considered some of his greatest work.

The color film used for all the work in the book was the newly developed Kodachrome and perhaps this explains why many photos have an overdeveloped darkness but when mixed with the greens and browns of the countryside, city and factory it gives all these pictures an authentic texture.

I think this is a wonderful book of photos and the addition of color, especially to the FSA ones, reveals an intriguing new look and feel to a black and white vision of the past.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Marvelous November 29, 2004

By Judy Paris

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I brought this book after reading a NY times review. Finally-history that is in real color, not the typical black and white we're so use to. It makes the era seem so much more alive and real. The photos displayed are beautiful - there's such a real display of feelings and emotions. I just love this gem.