Thursday 11 December 2008Fields of Vision: evocative images of a vanished world

Published in association with the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Fields of Vision: Recording a Century of American Life is a completely new presentation of an internationally important and historically significant collection of photographs, featuring great works of 20th century photography

The Library of Congress’ Farm Security Administration/Office of War Administration Collection is a unique trove of photographs that documents American life during the Great Depression. Each accessible and beautifully produced volume in the Fields of Vision series focuses on a single FSA photographer whose particular vision helped shape the collective identity of America by putting a realistic face on the American past and influencing the way we look at photographs in the twenty-first century. Many of the images—such as Dorothea Lange’s famous Migrant Mother—have become cultural icons and are frequently referenced by contemporary scholars, writers, and documentary photographers. Thousands of images in this archive by lesser-known photographers are as evocative as the work of Lange and Walker Evans, but have yet to be widely seen. Their images transport the viewer to American homes, farms, and streets of the 1930s and 1940s while offering a glimpse of a new narrative and intimate style that was later to blossom on the pages of LOOK and LIFE magazines. For many Americans of the pre-televisual age, the diversity and complexity of their country was defined by the lenses of these men and women.

The 77,000 photographs in the Library of Congress’ collection from the Resettlement Administration (RA, 1935-1937), Farm Security Administration (FSA, 1937-1942) and Office of War Information (OWI, 1942-1944) provide a unique and comprehensive view of American life from 1935 to 1944. This government photography project, headed by Roy E. Stryker, employed many relatively unknown names who later went on to become some of the 20th-century’s best-known photographers, such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, Arthur Rothstein and Carl Mydans. Initially conceived to document government loans to farmers and their resettlement in suburban communities, the scope of the project expanded to create a visual record of agricultural workers in the South, Mid-West and Western United States. Later, Stryker’s photographers recorded both rural and urban centres throughout the country as the nation prepared for World War II. Though not told what to photograph, Stryker gave them guidelines to “shoot everyday life”; as Ben Shahn said, “we just took pictures that cried out to be taken.” Photographers were assigned to specific regions of the country. In 1941, Marion Post Wolcott was documenting migrant workers in Florida, while Jack Delano was photographing African-American inmates in a Greene Country, Georgia, jail. Russell Lee sent Stryker film of a gold-mining town in Colorado in 1942, while John Vachon was documenting the farmers hit hard by the Depression in the Midwestern plains.

Each of the first three volumes in this brand new series, published under the collective title Fields of Vision, presents 50 striking and often experimental images by an individual FSA/OWI photographer. While most are black and white negatives, colour transparencies do exist and are among the lesser-known images in the collection. These are included in select volumes to give a complete sense of the photographer’s work. In addition, each volume features an introduction to the work of the photographer by a leading contemporary author or writer, as well as a biography. Together, the volumes recreate for the viewer a picture of life prior to World War II and communicate a foreboding sense of the changes that would follow.

Nicholas Lemann has published five books, most recently Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War (2006). He has written extensively for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Slate and American Heritage and has worked in documentary television with Blackside, Inc., Frontline, the Discovery Channel, and the BBC.
Timothy Egan is a national enterprise reporter for The New York Times. In 2001, he was part of a team of reporters awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s series exploring racial attitudes across contemporary America. He is the author of four books, including The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (2006), which won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2006.
Francine Prose is the author of 13 books of fiction, including the novel Blue Angel (2001), a finalist for the National Book Award and The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists they Inspired (2003).A recipient of numerous grants and awards, including Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships, she was a Director’s Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.
Amy Pastan is an independent editor and book packager. She was formerly a staff editor at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and acquisitions editor at the Smithsonian Institution Press, where she developed award-winning books on photography and fine arts.

FIELDS OF VISION
Recording a Century of American Life
For September 2008 (UK and USA):
The Photographs of Russell Lee, The Library of Congress Introduction by Nicholas Lemann
ISBN 978-1-904832-39-3 (13 digit); ISBN 1-904832-39-3 (10 digit)
The Photographs of Ben Shahn, The Library of Congress
Introduction by Timothy Egan
ISBN 978-1-904832-40-9 (13 digit); ISBN 1-904832-40-7 (10 digit)
The Photographs of Marion Post Wolcott, The Library of Congress
Introduction by Francine Prose
ISBN 978-1-904832-41-6 (13 digit); ISBN 1-904832-41-5 (10 digit)

For 2010 (UK and USA):
The Photographs of Jack Delano, The Library of Congress
ISBN 978-1-904832-46-1 (13 digit); ISBN 1-904832-46-6 (10 digit)
The Photographs of John Vachon, The Library of Congress
ISBN 978-1-904832-47-8 (13 digit); ISBN 1-904832-47-4 (10 digit)
The Photographs of Esther Bubley, The Library of Congress
ISBN 978-1-904832-48-5 (13 digit); ISBN 1-904832-48-2 (10 digit)

Each volume:
64 pages, 7 1/8” x 7 1/8” (180 x 180mm)
50 colour illustrations, paperback
Text: Up to 12,000 words

Price: US$12.95/UK£6.95
Publication date: September 2008 and 2010
Publisher: D Giles Limited, London

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For more information on the history of the Library of Congress, visit http://www.loc.gov.