American Modern: Documentary Photographs by Abbott, Evans and Bourke-White
American Modern, the beautifully illustrated companion volume to the exhibit of the same name, explores the reinvention of documentary photography in the 1930s, focusing on the work of three iconic figures: Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, and Margaret Bourke-White. More broadly, the book maps the formation of what we now identify as “documentary style,” showing how a marginalized genre associated with Progressive reform politics was transformed into a major component of modern art and public culture in America. The essays by Sharon Corwin, Jessica May, and Terri Weissman describe how each of these three photographers developed a different model of photography--as well as a particular understanding of modernism and modernity--which each believed would set the standard for future generations of artists. American Modern identifies the points where Abbott, Evans, and Bourke-White connected, diverged, and competed, and demonstrates how commercial and governmental commissions, the influence of mass media, the establishment of public institutions of modern art, and international theories of photography all intersected to establish the now-dominant documentary style.
PRAISE FOR AMERICAN MODERN
"While acknowledge that Alfred Stieglitz's circle had earned the young medium a measure of artistic legitimacy, [Walker] Evans rejected his predecessor's airy, often abstract imagery. American Modern..shows how this impulse paved the way for some of the 1930s most famous photographs. -- Wall Street Journal
"With three smart essays and an incisive selection of pictures, American Modern shows how the practice of documentary photography during the 1930s was morem capacious adn flexible than we ever thought....This book tells us how beloved documentarians like Abbott, Bourke-White and Evans learned how to walk these many paths...This is good stuff." -- Anthony W. Lee, Mount Holyoke College
"Well-written essays reveal the dark mood and deeply political roots of the documentary style and focus on each artist's journey." -- Shutterbug