During the 1930s, the world of photography was unsettled, exciting, and boisterous. John Raeburn's "A Staggering Revolution" recreates the energy of the era by surveying photography's rich variety of innovation, exploring the aesthetic and cultural achievements of its leading figures, and mapping the paths their pictures blazed public's imagination. While other studies of thirties photography have concentrated on the documentary work of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), no previous book has considered it alongside so many of the decade's other important photographic projects. "A Staggering Revolution" includes individual chapters on Edward Steichen's celebrity portraiture; Berenice Abbott's Changing New York project; the Photo League's ethnography of Harlem; and, Edward Weston's western landscapes, made under the auspices of the first Guggenheim Fellowship awarded to a photographer. It also examines Margaret Bourke-White's industrial and documentary pictures, the collective undertakings by California's Group f.64, and the fashion magazine specialists, as well as the activities of the FSA and the Photo League. Raeburn's expansive study explains how the democratic atmosphere of thirties photography nourished innovation and encouraged new heights of artistic achievement. It also produced the circumstances that permitted artful photography to become such a thriving public enterprise during the decade. "A Staggering Revolution" offers an illuminating analysis of the sociology of photography's art world and its galleries and exhibitions, but also demonstrates the importance of the novel venues created by impresarios and others that proved essential to photography's extraordinary dissemination. These new channels, including camera magazines and annuals, volumes of pictures enhanced by text, and omnibus exhibitions in unconventional spaces, greatly expanded photography's cultural visibility. They also made its enthusiastic audience larger and more heterogeneous than ever before - or since.
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Editorial Reviews
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"Raeburn skillfully treats the role of the FSA photography project in the contexts of art. In the process he offers the most nuanced, perceptive discussion of the much-misunderstood role of FSA project chief Roy Emerson Stryker that I have ever read. Even for those of us well-schooled in the history and practices of the FSA, these chapters offer something new and valuable. . . . Raeburn challenges readers to look beyond received wisdom about the visual culture of the 1930s and explore it anew for themselves."--American Historical Review
"A sweeping cultural history of 1930s photography and a passionate argument that photographs are powerful pieces of historical evidence and should not be treated as merely illustrations."--Winterthur Portfolio
Book Description
A comprehensive cultural and artistic history of photography during its most dynamic period
During the 1930s, the world of photography was unsettled, exciting, and boisterous. John Raeburn’s A Staggering Revolution recreates the energy of the era by surveying photography’s rich variety of innovation, exploring the aesthetic and cultural achievements of its leading figures, and mapping the paths their pictures blazed public’s imagination.
While other studies of thirties photography have concentrated on the documentary work of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), no previous book has considered it alongside so many of the decade’s other important photographic projects. A Staggering Revolution includes individual chapters on Edward Steichen’s celebrity portraiture; Berenice Abbott’s Changing New York project; the Photo League’s ethnography of Harlem; and Edward Weston’s western landscapes, made under the auspices of the first Guggenheim Fellowship awarded to a photographer. It also examines Margaret Bourke-White's industrial and documentary pictures, the collective undertakings by California's Group f.64, and the fashion magazine specialists, as well as the activities of the FSA and the Photo League.
Raeburn’s expansive study explains how the democratic atmosphere of thirties photography nourished innovation and encouraged new heights of artistic achievement. It also produced the circumstances that permitted artful photography to become such a thriving public enterprise during the decade. A Staggering Revolution offers an illuminating analysis of the sociology of photography’s art world and its galleries and exhibitions, but also demonstrates the importance of the novel venues created by impresarios and others that proved essential to photography’s extraordinary dissemination. These new channels, including camera magazines and annuals, volumes of pictures enhanced by text, and omnibus exhibitions in unconventional spaces, greatly expanded photography’s cultural visibility. They also made its enthusiastic audience larger and more heterogeneous than ever before--or since.
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A superb, well researched, cultural and historical review, this thesis ads significantly
to the canon of art history as it relates to both photography and social evolution. The book suffers from too few photographs and those that have been included are, for most part, predictable. Nevertheless, Raeburn's fact filled narration is bright and engaging, offering strong and insightful points of view regarding the interplay between the social culture of the 1930s and the photography of the decade. The underlying stories of the photographers themselves and how they struggled, worked and interacted with their collaborators are surprisingly illuminating. Though many of the historical facts have been known to us for some time, Raeburn brings significant new information to the table, facts and events which are a delight to know and which round out the character of the artistic milieu of the era. Raeburn's enthusiasm for the subject is infectious. This is an essential work for any student of photographic history. Informative and highly readable, the notes alone are worth the price of the volume. Russ Anderson
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It has become a truism among political scientists, historians, and informal observers of American political history that compromise is the hallmark of the liberal polity. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
microfilm supplement, middling interest, antebellum feminism, ward voting, township returns, patriotic chief, antebellum feminists, equitable model, slavery prohibition, mechanic interest, concurring majorities, artisan republicanism, male continence, slavery provision, mule spinners, township elections, county returns, second party system, party spokesmen, early republic Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Van Buren, United States, Rhode Island, New England, Association Minute Books, Chapel Hill, William Cooper, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Knox, New Haven, George Washington, Weekly Register, Journal of the Senate, Washington Globe, Faneuil Hall, New Hampshire, Papers of Madison, Columbian Centinel, Congressional Globe, James Madison New!
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- William Dunlap And The Construction Of An American Art History by Maura Lyons in Front Matter
- Crucible of American Democracy: The Struggle to Fuse Egalitarianism and Capitalism in Jeffersonian Pennsylvania (American Political Thought) by Andrew Shankman in Back Matter
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