INDEX and More than thirty years later these photos still inspire

The 1987 edition is a lot smaller than the new Steidl  book.

 

An excellent and timely reprint of the revised edition of Sternfeld's remarkable photobook originally published in 1987 (and frequently excessively priced on the net). I think this Steidl edition is the one to get if you want to appreciate his work. The book is presented in the classic photobook format with an image on each right-hand page and facing a blank one opposite except for a caption. The photos at 34 by 27 centimeters are much bigger than in the original book (24.5 by 20) and printed on a whiter paper than the more creamy white in the '87 copy, both books use a 175 screen. Though perhaps a very minor point the photos include a bit more on each side and I assume that what I'm looking at on the page is the complete frame. Finally, the revised edition includes sixteen more photos than the original fifty-five.

'American Prospects' joins several books that defined American commonplace over the last few decades. Titles like: 'American Photos' by Evans; 'The Americans' by Frank; 'The American Monument' by Friedlander; 'Suburbia' by Owens; 'William Egglestone's Guide'; 'Uncommon Places' by Shore. These photographers captured the landscape in their own unique way and Sternfeld seemed to specialize in being at the right place at the right time, for example, the exhausted elephant on a local road or the fireman buying pumpkins at a farmers market while a house burns nearby. Also the large moored battleship and a few yards away a lone fisherman sitting on the shore or a house more or less demolished in a tornado but still standing with a fridge with its door open and showing how well stocked it was, the backs of tourists looking over the parapet of a dam and behind them a mobile playpen on the highway with a baby looking at the camera.

Because of their large size, Sternfeld's seventy-one photos in the book stimulate repeat viewing which never disappoints.

　

 
　

The creative years

 

After the Nazi closure of the Bauhaus Laszlo Moholy-Nagy lived in London for just over twenty-five or so months but in that time he packed in a quite remarkable amount of creativity which is revealed in this interesting book. MN was one of those rare artists who could work in various mediums like photography, typography, shop design, film, posters, graphics and publication design. He is best known for his interest in photography either taking pictures or its theoretical aspect. The book has several photos from two books 'Eton portraits' 1937, An Oxford University Chest 1938 and some from a 1936 commission for the Architectural Review about the English seaside.

Graphic design work includes brochures for Isokon furniture, three posters for London Transport, a brochure for Imperial Airways, and an ad for Venesta plywood. With his ex-Bauhaus friends, Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer NM designed retail window displays and an aviation exhibition for Simpson's of Piccadilly. Pages thirty-eight and nine have a photo of a small plane from the exhibition held on the store's top floor, there were three planes on show. Other retail work included an electrical showroom in London. When Walter Gropius left for Harvard in 1937 a dinner was arranged for 136 guests and MN designed an interesting six-page fold-out menu (printed by Lund Humphries, the publisher of this title).

The book, with lots of photos and printed ephemera (letters, invoices, invitations, magazine cuttings, etc) reveals what MN did in Britain and it also captures the feel of those extraordinary times in the late Thirties when architects like Gropius, Breuer, Fry, Chermayeff, Lubetkin, the MARS group and Tecton were working on cutting edge buildings in this country.

　

 

　

The reality of the myths revealed

 

The Big Wide West myths of cowboys, cattle and stampedes, Indians, six-guns, outlaws, the small town sheriff and his posse (heading the rustlers off at Big Rock Gulch) were very much created by Hollywood and decades before that with stories in newspapers and popular fiction. All that remains, as they always have, are huge open spaces of prairies and mountains set in stunning landscapes. Joan Myers wanted to find and photograph the people who still live in these out of the way places in the Rocky Mountain and Plains states.

So many of these interesting photos reveal that the locals still rely on the myths to earn a living. Many pictures show amateur lettering to attract the tourists and paintings on large signs or walls of cowboys, cattle, Indians, the empty landscape maybe with a buffalo or two. Wigwams pop up here and there as shops or campgrounds, abandoned gas stations and trading posts litter the wide open spaces to confirm that away from cities and suburbs life isn't easy for the locals. To make the point Myers has ended the book with three photos of Helena and Livingston, Montana and Wendover, Nevada, all large towns with their commercial strips full of slick professional signage and no derelict buildings.

I enjoyed Myers contemporary view of the New West, she has an eye for capturing a scene with plenty of visual detail that makes the 102 photos well worth repeat viewing. Damiani did their usual excellent print job (in Italy during July this year) with a two hundred screen on a silky matt art paper.