{"title":"The Physiognomy of a Nation","authors":"Stephanie Schwartz","doi":"10.1162/octo_a_00492","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay revisits American Photographs, one of the most important photographic books of the 1930s. Containing two portfolios by Walker Evans and an essay by Lincoln Kirstein, the 1938 publication presents readers with eighty-seven photographs printed one per double-page spread. While critical studies of the book have focused on the sequential ordering of the photographs, and on the book's filmic qualities, this essay considers the book's other organizing principle: physiognomy. More specifically, focusing on Evans's decision to include three photographs that he made in Cuba into the book's first part, it attends to the processes of racialization organizing the book and producing America in the 1930s. Challenging canonical accounts of American Photographs and Depression-era documentary more broadly, this essay argues for a history of documentary that does not dispense with its modernism. The argument is not that modernism is still with us but that we need its repetitions.","PeriodicalId":51557,"journal":{"name":"OCTOBER","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"OCTOBER","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1162/octo_a_00492","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract This essay revisits American Photographs, one of the most important photographic books of the 1930s. Containing two portfolios by Walker Evans and an essay by Lincoln Kirstein, the 1938 publication presents readers with eighty-seven photographs printed one per double-page spread. While critical studies of the book have focused on the sequential ordering of the photographs, and on the book's filmic qualities, this essay considers the book's other organizing principle: physiognomy. More specifically, focusing on Evans's decision to include three photographs that he made in Cuba into the book's first part, it attends to the processes of racialization organizing the book and producing America in the 1930s. Challenging canonical accounts of American Photographs and Depression-era documentary more broadly, this essay argues for a history of documentary that does not dispense with its modernism. The argument is not that modernism is still with us but that we need its repetitions.
期刊介绍:
At the forefront of art criticism and theory, October focuses critical attention on the contemporary arts and their various contexts of interpretation: film, painting, music, media, photography, performance, sculpture, and literature. Examining relationships between the arts and their critical and social contexts, October addresses a broad range of readers. Original, innovative, provocative, each issue presents the best, most current texts by and about today"s artistic, intellectual, and critical vanguard.