Fluid steel

I can remember seeing the work of de Rivera decades ago when I was at design college and I loved the look of his thin steel tube sculpture and over the years I would come across a picture of one of his works in a book or a magazine article about modern art. It was only recently that I decided I really should find out about this abstract sculpture. Books about him are remarkable few and as he died in 1985 I think he's now become a sort of footnote in art history.

Luckily this book (in English) by the Spanish publishers Taller is probably the only book worth getting, published in 1979 with well over two hundred images. Most are photos of de Rivera's table sculptures with some in color and others of his large corporate and civic work plus an interesting selection of him working in his Long Island studio. The are two essays, the first an Introduction by Dore Ashton was sort of interesting but Joan Marter's forty-one page essay was first class and it made me appreciate his work even more.
 
The book's production is not up to today's standards of art books with quality printing on good art paper though I think it's typical of its time but as it's really all there is on this great sculpture it's worth searching out.

　

 

　

The continuing fascination with LC-USF 34-9058-C



This is the page from Bill Ganzel's book Dust Bowl descent showing Florence Thompson and her daughters in June 1979
　

A brief but worthwhile little book devoted to Lange's Migrant Mother. In forty-eight pages Sarah Meister creates an interesting story of how Lange took this photo in a Californian pea-pickers camp in early March 1936 and how, over the years, it has grown in stature to be regarded as a masterpiece of American documentary photography.

 

It was one of seven shots Lange took of Florence Thompson and her children trying to keep warm in a very makeshift tent. The book shows the shots, two reveal the tent and a bit of the surrounding field, four show Lange moving closer to the family who are all looking at the photographer and the final shot shows the back of the girls' heads resting on their mother's shoulders.

 

The photos of the camp (which had 2,500 under-fed pea-pickers) including those of Thompson and her children created a lot of interest in Californian papers and the story spread across the country frequently using the same photo. Over the years it started to assume the status of being the one photo that defined the Depression years. Naturally, it attracted critics that said that it looked posed and so lacked authenticity and how disgraceful that Lange had Thompson's thumb holding the tent flap retouched out (with thumb and without photos are included in the book). Also included are some contemporary reproductions showing its altered use as magazine covers and in editorial pages. Oddly the author didn't use the June 1979 photo showing Florence Thompson and her three daughters that Bill Ganzel used in his 'Dust Bowl Descent' book, he tracked down many of the still living people shown in well-known FSA pictures.

 

Roy Stryker (who was Lange's FSA boss in Washington during the thirties) in 1972, said this about the photo: "After all these years, I still get that picture out and look at it. The quietness and the stillness of it. Was that women calm or not? I've never known. I cannot account for that woman. So many times I've asked myself what is she thinking? She has all the of the suffering of mankind in her but all of the perseverance too. A restraint and a strange courage. You can see anything you want in her. She is immortal. Look at that hand. Look at the child. Look at those fingers --those two heads of hair."



 

 

Showtime in Kim Land

Who would have believed it? Poor, isolated North Korea a country near the bottom of any economic list yet its capitol showcase a most extraordinary collection of civic buildings and skyscraper public housing. Even more remarkable because the city was more or less destroyed in the early fifties during the Korean War. The book's two authors, both architects, visited Pyongyang several times from 2015 and they wanted to find out more about this unknown centre of socialist architecture.

The book is a collection of fascinating exterior (and a few interior) photos revealing contemporary buildings erected in the last few decades. The pictures though have an extra element because the author's wanted to add a bit of 'fictional reality' to the shots, they were inspired by the fantasy element used in North Korean posters to hype up the countries failed reality. All the exterior photos have a perfect pastel blue sky morphing into a light pink around the buildings, it certainly creates an intriguing collection of images rather like those Photoshop renderings of architectural developments, the difference, of course, is that these buildings are real.

The author's say that there were quite rigorous conditions imposed on taking the photos and it was all very controlled. This is evident because there are virtually no other (older) buildings near these new structures to spoil the view. Page 186 has a photo of Mirae Scientists Street with its wide boulevard and skyscrapers disappearing into the distance. Traffic hardly exists, the basic means of transport is walking or cycling though in 1973 an underground system was opened with seventeen stations and very much based on the Moscow Metro model of lavish decoration, there are eight photos of the system in the book.

The nation's head, Kim Jong Un, sees Pyongyang as a showcase of socialist endeavour with most of the population working as civil servants or the military and they enjoy a lifestyle that never really percolates out to the countries other major cities like Wonsan, Chongjin, Nampo or Tanchon.

The book is a handy size and nicely printed (in China) though I thought it was a mistake to print the four illustrated essays in darkish green ink. The back pages have some city plans printed in green and light pink.

Turn over the pages in this fascinating photobook and central Pyongyang is revealed as a modern wonder capitol supported by the countries ramshackle economy.