From Publishers Weekly
A first-generation Czech Texan, photographer Trlica made his portrait studio in Granger, Tex., an egalitarian meeting place for all races, from 1924 through the mid-1950s. His carefully posed yet artistic pictures celebrate turning points in the lives of blacks, Mexican Americans, Southern Anglos and the European immigrant community but scarcely hint at the intercultural tensions among these groups, as McCandless notes in her rewarding introductory essay. Trlica's orderly, static documentary photographs of cotton field workers, store windows, unpaved residential streets and festivals bear hardly a trace of Granger's racist climate, white Americans' fear and distrust of other ethnic groups or the severe economic dislocation resulting from overreliance on "King Cotton." All of these issues are sensitively discussed by McCandless, a curator at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Tex.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This album of historical photographs from a small Texas town captures for all time the various ethnic groups and immigrants who lived there from 1925 to 1945. From the late 1800s, almost every town in America supported at least one commercial photographer who inadvertently documented its history through formal portraits and special assignments around the community. Over the course of his career, Trlica, a Czech immigrant, built a similar visual archive of the social life of his adopted home of Granger, Texas. McCandless has done a very good job of selecting, arranging, and interpreting the photographs, all of which are reproduced in duotone. The result is a lovely and intriguing book. Equal Before the Lens will be of obvious interest and value in regional collections. However, because it deals with an overlooked area in American studies, it also deserves a place in social history and documentary photography collections. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.
- Raymond Bial, Parkland Coll. Lib., Champaign, Ill.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Raymond Bial, Parkland Coll. Lib., Champaign, Ill.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
