The Physiognomy of a Nation

IF 0.4 4区 社会学 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY
OCTOBER Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI:10.1162/octo_a_00492
Stephanie Schwartz
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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.
一个国家的地貌
本文回顾了20世纪30年代最重要的摄影书籍之一《美国摄影》。1938年出版的这本书包含了沃克·埃文斯(Walker Evans)的两个作品集和林肯·科尔斯坦(Lincoln Kirstein)的一篇文章,向读者展示了87张照片,每两页印刷一张。虽然对这本书的批判性研究主要集中在照片的顺序顺序和这本书的电影品质上,但本文考虑了这本书的另一个组织原则:面相学。更具体地说,它关注埃文斯决定将他在古巴拍摄的三张照片纳入书的第一部分,关注种族化的过程,组织这本书,并在20世纪30年代制作美国。这篇文章更广泛地挑战了美国摄影和大萧条时期纪录片的权威描述,认为纪录片的历史并不缺少现代主义。争论的焦点并不是现代主义仍然存在,而是我们需要它的重复。
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来源期刊
OCTOBER
OCTOBER HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-
CiteScore
0.10
自引率
33.30%
发文量
0
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.
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