U. S. CAMERA 1936
Tom Maloney [Editor], Alexey Brodovitch [Cover Designer]
Tom Maloney [Editor]: U. S. CAMERA 1936. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1936. First edition. Quarto. Wire spiral binding. Thick photographically printed covers. 208 [xxxiv] pp. Gravure plates. Color letterpress plates. Essays. Index. Advertisments. Front cover edgeworn and creased. Textblock edges thumbed. Plates in generally very good condition. Difficult to find in collectible condition. Cover design by Alexey Brodovitch. A nearly very good copy
8.5 x 11.75 spiral-bound softcover book with over 200 pages of gorgeous full-page black and white gravure plates printed at the Beck Engraving Company. [Ref.: Horacio Fernandez (ed.) : FOTOGRAFÍA PÚBLICA: PHOTOGRAPHY IN PRINT 1919-1939. Aldeasa: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 1999.]
Includes work by Berenice Abbott, Cecil Beaton, Ruth Bernhard, Margaret Bourke-White, Anton Breuhl, Will Connell, Imogen Cunningham, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Arnold Genthe, Leslie Gill, Laura Gilpin, LeJaren Hiller, Horst, Hoyningen-Huene, Ruth Jacobi, Rockwell Kent, Victor Keppler, Dmitri Kessel, Dorothea Lange, George Platt Lynes, Herbert Matter, Martin Munkacsi, Paul Outerbridge, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, Charles Sheeler, Peter Stackpole, Edward Steichen, Ralph Steiner, Brett Weston, Edward Weston, and many others.
U. S. CAMERA 1936 includes several images by Roy Stryker’s FSA photographers, including iconic images by Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, etc.:
- Is Photography Art? by Dr. M. F. Agha
- Edit by Edward Steichen, Arnold Genthe, LeJaren Hiller, Ira Martin, martin Kent, Remie Lohse, Valentino Sarra, M. F. Agha and Alvan Macauley.
- Photographs? by Edward Steichen
"Our century will be the age of the photograph." --Waldemar George
In 1925, the critic, poet, and one of the founders of Surrealism, Andre Breton, posed the question: when would 'all the books that are worth anything stop being illustrated with drawings and appear only with photographs?’ A few short years after this statement, the photographic image had established itself as one of the most provocative, poetic, and radical forms of representation in modern society. A plethora of groundbreaking exhibitions, books and publicity, the work of some of the most influential figures in history of photography, ushered in the creative flowering of the medium across Europe. Unquestionably the increasingly effective presence of photography was tied to the emergence of these new recruits and their passionate conviction regarding its creative worth. [Kerry William Purcell]
Gravure is praised by conneiseurs the world over, because of the incomparably rich palette of blacks and shades of gray, the breadth of tonal range, and its exquisite expressiveness. Despite these qualities, gravure has pretty much disappeared over the last fifty years: the costly and time-consuming traditional gravure technique has been abandoned in favor of cheaper, faster modern industrial printing methods.