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Bust to Boom: Documentary Photographs of Kansas, 1936-1949
Contributor(s): Schulz, Constance B. (Editor)
ISBN: 0700607994     ISBN-13: 9780700607990
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
OUR PRICE:   $49.45  
Product Type: Hardcover
Published: October 1996
Qty:
Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Annotation: Constance Schulz has brought together a diverse array of photographs from three extensive documentary projects: the Farm Security Administration, the Office of War Information, and Standard Oil of New Jersey. The result is a unique visual record of American life by photographers Arthur Rothstein, John Vachon, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, Edwin and Louise Rosskam, and Charles Rotkin. Collectively, their work has immortalized the faces and emotions of FSA-aided farmers and the harsh lives of coal miners, dust bowl debris and tumbleweeds, a failed bank and thriving stockyard, locomotives and Mexican-American railroad workers, oil derricks, wheat country, black cavalry troops, and 4-H Club fairs. In his enlightening introduction, environmental historian Donald Worster provides essential historical context for the images.
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Photography | Subjects & Themes - Regional (see Also Travel - Pictorials)
- History | United States - State & Local - General
Dewey: 978.1
LCCN: 96023859
Physical Information: 0.66" H x 8.32" W x 9.73" (1.70 lbs) 168 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - Western U.S.
- Geographic Orientation - Kansas
- Cultural Region - Heartland
- Cultural Region - Upper Midwest
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
I was supposed to be taking pictures to show that this was a great country and I was finding out it really was. . . . I didn't know it at the time, but I was having a last look at America as it used to be.--John Vachon

Kansans of the 1930s and 1940s lived through more sweeping changes than any other generation past or present. Destructive forces of nature, an economy gone awry, and a devastating--and ironically, economically renewing--war left the world irrevocably altered. In this captivating collection, some of America's best-known documentary photographers provide a valuable glimpse into that tumultuous time.

Constance Schulz has brought together a diverse array of photographs from three extensive documentary projects: the Farm Security Administration, the Office of War Information, and Standard Oil of New Jersey. The result is a unique visual record of American life by photographers Arthur Rothstein, John Vachon, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, Edwin and Louise Rosskam, and Charles Rotkin. Collectively, their work has immortalized the faces and emotions of FSA-aided farmers and the harsh lives of coal miners, dust-bowl debris and tumbleweeds, a failed bank and a thriving stockyard, locomotives and Mexican-American railroad workers, oil derricks, wheat country, black cavalry troops, and 4-H Club fairs.

In his enlightening introduction, environmental historian Donald Worster provides historical context for the images. Examining state, national, and international events from 1930 to 1950, he explores the agricultural, business, social, political, and environmental climates as well as the composition of the state's population and its inevitable shift away from rural life toward urbanization and industrialization. Schulz also supplies fundamental information on the photographers and the photographic projects.

Originally created as a means to promote government and business programs, the FSA, OWI, and Standard Oil photographs--most never before published--are an excellent source for individuals and communities searching for a visual record of their local heritage during two of the most crucial decades in American history.