by Rosanne Cash
First published 2016
Bill McDowell presents a collection of discarded FSA archive photographs, images that Roy Stryker marked for destruction with his hole punch during the 1930s. The book features previously unpublished work by Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Ben Shahn, Marion Post Wolcott, John Vachon, Paul Carter, Theodor Jung, Carl Mydans, and Arthur Rothstein. McDowell organizes these rejected negatives according to what they depict and how their physical damage transforms their meaning. The black holes punched through each image create an abstract quality that feels contemporary, giving Depression era agricultural scenes and landscapes a dual existence in time. These photographs document government programs, racial and class divisions, fertile and damaged farmland, natural disasters, and population movements. McDowell argues that the physical intervention of Stryker's hole punch connects these historical images to current practices of artistic alteration and appropriation, making them speak to our own recovery from economic crisis.
Genres: art, 20th-century, 21st-century, photography, art-history
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: documentary, historical-fiction
Period: 1930s
176 pages · Hardcover · Daylight Books