Photos filled with the forlorn faces of hungry and impoverished
Americans that came to characterize the desolation of the Great
Depression are among the best known artworks of the twentieth
century. Captured by the camera's eye, these stark depictions of
suffering became iconic markers of a formative period in U.S.
history. Although there has been an ample amount of critical
inquiry on Depression-era photographs, the bulk of scholarship
treats them as isolated art objects. And yet they were often joined
together with evocative writing in a genre that flourished amid the
period, the documentary book. American Modernism and Depression
Documentary looks at the tradition of the hybrid, verbal-visual
texts that flourished during a time when U.S. citizens were
becoming increasingly conscious of the life of a larger nation.
Jeff Allred draws on a range of seminal works to illustrate the
convergence of modernism and documentary, two forms often regarded
as unrelated. Whereas critics routinely look to James Agee and
Walker Evans' Let Us Now Praise Famous Men as the sole instance of
the modernist documentary book, Allred turns to such works as
Richard Wright's scathing 12 Million Black Voices, and the
oft-neglected You Have Seen Their Faces by Erskine Caldwell and
Margaret Bourke-White to open up the critical playing field. And
rather than focusing on the ethos of Progressivism and/or the
politics and aesthetics of the New Deal, Allred emphasizes the
centrality of Life magazine to the consolidation of a novel
cultural form.
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