American Politicians: Photographs from 1843 to 1993 - Hardcover

Kismaric, Susan

3.6

5 ratings by Goodreads

9780810961357: American Politicians: Photographs from 1843 to 1993

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810961350 ISBN 13: 9780810961357

Publisher: Museum of Modern Art, 1994

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

American Politicians presents a marvellous collection of images, from Mathew Brady's indelible portraits of Abraham Lincoln to the carefully staged "photo opportunities" of today. Among them are icons of political photography - Calvin Coolidge wearing a Native American headdress, Fiorello La Guardia reading comics over the radio, Harry Truman playing piano for Lauren Bacall, Lyndon Johnson displaying the scar from his surgery. Also reproduced are many rare photographs of both prominent and obscure practitioners of the rites of American politics, caught unrelentingly by the camera. The pictures have been selected from an array of public and private collections, including those of the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, the Museum of the City of New York, the New-York Historical Society, the Chicago Historical Society. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the archives of photo agencies, newspapers, and magazines.
Many of the photographs in this book are the work of professional news photographers, but after World War II, independent artists offered alternative views, represented here by the photographs of Robert Frank in the 1950s, Garry Winogrand and Elliott Erwitt in the 1960s, Larry Fink in the 1970s, and Judith Joy Ross in the 1980s. Despite unceasing advances in visual technology, which simultaneously aid and hinder photographers, and despite the best efforts of political handlers, both newsmen and independents continue to make the pictures that help to create and confirm the image of ourselves we see reflected in our politicians.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly:

This catalogue of 150 photos drawn from an exhibition at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art is at once a retrospective of America's cultural ambiguities, a pageant of visual technology, a paean to antiestablishment photo-artists like Robert Frank and Gary Winogrand and a meticulous register of source data primarily of interest to specialists. Kismaric, curator of MoMA's department of photography, traces the photography of American politics from early devotional portraits of John Quincy Adams, Lincoln, et al., through the interplay of political and photojournalistic aims that came with faster film, handier cameras and personalities like Teddy Roosevelt, FDR and John F. Kennedy. This panoply has now dwindled, the author finds, to a dull, security-minded photo policy on the part of most modern politicians concerned with controlling their images. Some of the photos included here of Lincoln and others appear to have been enhanced technically, with telling effect.

From Library Journal:

In this book, published in conjunction with a Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) exhibition of the same title, Kismaric has selected 150 duotone photographs that build a chronology of American photography of politicians, from the carefully staged portraits of the 19th century to more contemporary images, generated by motor-driven 35 mm cameras that can grab odd moments of face and form. Kismaric is curator of MOMA's Department of Photography, and true to her museum's tradition she offers a crisp and informative text that follows the evolution of the depiction of American politicians in black and white. A surprising range of emotions are shown in these politicians; early shots carry the visual message of the absurd, while the much-discussed "photo opportunity" is rarely seen later in this collection. Recommended for academic, museum, and public libraries.
David Bryant, New Canaan Lib., Conn.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.