Over one hundred pictures selected from the collection of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard.

The paintings, murals, and graphics of Ben Shahn (1898-1969) have made him one of the most heralded American artists of the twentieth century, but during the 1930s he was also among the nation's premier photographers. Much of his photographic work was sponsored by the New Deal's Farm Security Administration, where his colleagues included Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. Ben Shahn's American Scene: Photographs, 1938 presents one hundred superb photographs from his most ambitious FSA project, a survey of small-town life in the Depression. John Raeburn's accompanying text illuminates the thematic and formal significance of individual photographs and reveals how, taken together, they address key cultural and political issues of the years leading up to World War II. Shahn's photographs highlight conflicts between traditional values and the newer ones introduced by modernity as represented by the movies, chain stores, and the tantalizing allure of consumer goods, and they are particularly rich in observation about the changes brought about by Americans' universal reliance on the automobile. They also explore the small town's standing as the nation's symbol of democratic community and expose the discriminatory social and racial practices that subverted this ideal in 1930s America.

BEN SHAHN offers a comprehensive look at the art work of one of the leading social realists of our time. The book includes pieces done in the 1930s depicting the effects of the Depression, urban decay, labor strikes & poverty. Brilliant posters created for the Office of War Information during World War II describe Shahn's work in the 1940s. The book explores the artist's post-war transition from a social realism to a "personal realism," employing allegory & symbolism. Through discussions of his political views, his struggles to maintain artistic integrity, as well as through selections of Shahn's own writings, the author weaves a compelling portrait of the man & his work. BEN SHAHN includes an extensive bibliography. Other Pomegranate books dedicated to twentieth-century American artists: CHILDE HASSAM'S NEW YORK, by Ilene Susan Fort, ISBN 1-55640-317-0, $21.95; EDWARD HOPPER'S NEW ENGLAND, by Carl Little, ISBN 1-55640-315-4, $21.95; & STEWARD DAVIS'S ABSTRACT ARGOT, by William Wilson, ISBN 1-55640-316-2.

"Ben Shahn, painter, muralist, and graphic artist, was also a talented photographer who made documentary street photographs in New York City in the early 1930s. This book is the first to focus on his compelling New York images, showing how he used a camera to comment on many social issues of his day." "The book considers the immediate social history of Shahn's New York photographs and analyzes how his leftist politics and his interest in news photographs and film affected his photographic aesthetic. The authors assert the importance of analyzing Shahn's paintings and photographs together, explaining why the connections between the two have been ignored until now. The book reproduces not only Shahn's New York photographs but also his related paintings, prints, and drawings, and an appendix presents documents that speak to the impact of his photographic work."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Featuring the indelible work of the eleven photographers who worked for the Farm Security Administration ? perhaps the finest photographic team assembled in the twentieth century ? A Vision Shared: A Classic Portrait of America and Its People 1935?1943 was published in 1976 to great acclaim, and was named one of the hundred most important books of the decade by the Association of American Publishers. John Collier, Jack Delano, Walker Evans, Theo Jung, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, John Vachon and Marion Post Wolcott were invited by Hank O?Neal to choose the best of their own work, and provide commentary.0For the fortieth anniversary edition of this remarkable volume, all of the photographs, text and historical material that made up the original edition have been carefully reproduced, followed by a new afterword by O?Neal detailing the events that followed the book?s initial release.

"A modern painter discusses meaning and form in contemporary painting and offers advice to aspiring artists."--