John Vachon's America : Photographs and Letters from the Depression to World War II

Rating:
Summary: Nice Try
Review: Mediocre writing,mediocre design,mediocre printing.Vachon's letters and journal entries are the reasons to buy this book.Document footnotes are few, far between-- and not very helpful. The book is a good start,but not equal to the artist or his art.

Rating:
Summary: Great photos, fascinating commentary
Review: This is a terrific book. It is beautifully designed and a pleasure to look at and look through. But in addition, the editor's comments are very illuminating. They bring both Vachon the man and his photographs to life. I picked this book up in the bookstore partly because I was struck by the cover photograph and then the ones inside, and partly because I had earlier read Orvell's wonderful book on American Photography in the Oxford History of Art series for a course I was taking. That book led me to his extraordinary book on culture, literature, and the material world, The Real Thing. Through these books, I have become a fan, and this volume did not disappoint. In my judgment, it is a wonderful volume, both for scholars looking to see the work and how it is viewed by one of America's leading writers on the art of photography, and for any lover of photography. It also gives a fascinating look at the world of the 1930's and 1940's and what it was like for an artist to live through and work in that era. For me, both Vachon's letters and Orvell's commentaries give a rich sense of context to the photographs, and the whole was much more than the sum of the parts (which is great when you start with parts that are so interesting to begin with).

Rating:
Summary: Mindful America
Review: What a pleasure to receive and read this book. The minor enjoyments of the volume include its duotone printing and elegantly clean design. The photographs have been treated very well by the University of California Press, but the delights of the volume are not limited to its handsome production. Vachon's cast of mind was witty and warm as well as mindful of the task that he was upon. Any reader will gain from reading his self-portrait in letters of a thoughtful young man out and about in what was to be one of the great tasks of our time - recording America. I relished his talent for language, as well as his talent for photography, and it is most uncommon to find the pairing so well represented. The editor's selections from the letters are informed, but they also reflect his fondness for his subject, and his astute understanding of the value of an intimate and individual perspective on process in such a large endeavor. The editor is fortunate to have had a subject of such an appealing voice, but the subject is well served to have had a sensitive and subtle editor.

The photographs are equally well chosen - Vachon, to my enjoyment, seems to have been attracted to language as symbol - numerous photographs incorporate signage that textually enriches the visual symbolizing of the photographs. Vachon's awareness as a photographer of the complexities of the medium is nicely articulated not only by the selection of images, but in the revealing pairings madeby the editor. Often, the resonance between the photographs on facing pages is as telling as the photos themselves. The combinations can be funny, and they can be poignant, but throughout, the photographs,the voice, and the editor's graceful handling of both combine to create an easy entree into an American time and American places.