The Grapes of Wrath and New Deal Documentary Photography
by James R. Swensen
Fully exploring this complex connection for the first time, Picturing Migrants offers new insight into Steinbeck’s novel and the FSA’s photography—and into the circumstances that have made them enduring icons of the Depression.
Less than thirty years after Lewis and Clark completed their epic journey, Prince Maximilian of Wied—a German naturalist—and his entourage set off on their own daring expedition across North America. Accompanying the prince on this 1832–34 voyage was Swiss artist Karl Bodmer, whose drawings and watercolors—designed to illustrate Maximilian’s journals—now rank among the great treasures of nineteenth-century American art. This lavishly illustrated book juxtaposes Bodmer’s landscape images with modern-day photographs of the same views, allowing readers to see what has changed, and what seems unchanged, since the time Maximilian and Bodmer made their storied trip up the Missouri River.
From the earliest days of European settlement, Americans have cherished the sight of a windmill—an instantly recognizable feature of the American landscape. Boasting nearly two hundred striking images, American Windmills is the first book devoted to photographs illustrating historic wind machines throughout North America. T. Lindsay Baker, an expert historian on windmills, has written about wind-power history for twenty-five years. His album contains historic images captured by professional windmiller B. H. “Tex” Burdick and from corporate archives of windmill manufacturers. It depicts windmills in a wide range of settings and uses—not only on ranches and farms but also alongside railroads, in industry, and even in urban areas.
The wealth of photographs Anderson took is represented here by more than 200 reproductions—the largest number ever published in a single collection. They are presented not as works of art (though many of them are indeed triumphs of the photographic art) but as important historical documents in the ongoing story of the American Indian.
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