"This fascinating book arrives at just the right moment, making a fresh contribution to renewed public and scholarly interest in the New Deal's FSA photography project and its part in the genesis of modern visual culture. Miles Orvell's skillful assemblage of image and word succeeds brilliantly in evoking John Vachon as both gifted photographer and complex man amidst his turbulent times. Vachon's pictures are at once subtle and truthful, and the texts Orvell has written and collected here illuminate the interplay of ...
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"This fascinating book arrives at just the right moment, making a fresh contribution to renewed public and scholarly interest in the New Deal's FSA photography project and its part in the genesis of modern visual culture. Miles Orvell's skillful assemblage of image and word succeeds brilliantly in evoking John Vachon as both gifted photographer and complex man amidst his turbulent times. Vachon's pictures are at once subtle and truthful, and the texts Orvell has written and collected here illuminate the interplay of individual talent, institutional mandate, and popular ideology that powered the FSA's picture making process."--Maren Stange, author of "Bronzeville: Black Chicago in Pictures, 1941-1943" "Miles Orvell has created an intriguing picture of a talented, introspective man as he goes about his work as an FSA photographer during the late 1930s and early 1940s. The various parts of the book come together to give us a non-fiction view of the USA and provide insight into documentary photography and the whole FSA project."--Townsend Ludington, author of "John Dos Passos: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey" and "Marsden Hartley: The Biography of an American Artist" "In this exciting and provocative book, Miles Orvell addresses an extremely important topic in the history of documentary photography. John Vachon's images and correspondence provide a fascinating counter-narrative to the end of American isolation and the coming of World War II. His writings are a trove of information, written with disarming candor and spiced with lively comments not only on his subjects but on a broad range of cultural issues. Orvell's introductory texts are equally compelling."--James C. Curtis, author of "Mind's Eye, Mind's Truth: FSA Photography Reconsidered"
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