Product Description

Perhaps no nation has been so thoroughly shaped by its dreams as has America, and perhaps no other dreams have been captured on camera as often and as diversely as America's. The mythic American Dream has been the subject of photographic documentation since the 1840s, when photographers first began traveling to the New World in search of subjects. From an unknown photographer's picture of newborn George B. Billings Rego, scion of an immigrant Portuguese family and the first child ever born at Boston Long Wharf, to Lewis Hine's wrenching image of a young cotton mill worker in Georgia, to Alfred Stieglitz's awesome New York cityscapes, the photographs collected here reveal the multiple facets of 100 of the most decisive years of American development. Between 1840 and 1940, immigrants became homeowners, untouched lands exploded in superhuman industrial growth, tourists replaced pioneers, and the American metropolis grew taller and shinier--and the camera caught it all. I believe in the American Dream. I have lived it. Where else could an ordinary boy born in Hope, Arkansas grow up to become President? The moving photographs in this beautiful exhibition chronicle some of the steps along the way to achieving the American Dream. They show us that the journey was not always easy, but nonetheless Americans persevered. ... Just as the camera captures an unblinking image, so the Americans pictured here face the world and its challenges head on. --Bill Clinton
Essays by Andreas Bluhm, Stephen White. Foreword by Bill Clinton. Photographers include: Mathew Brady, Imogen Cunningham, Walker Evans, Lewis Hine, Eadweard Muybridge, Alfred Stieglitz.

8.25 x 10.5 in.
195 color illustrations

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2176284 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-15
• Released on: 2001-12-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

From Library Journal
White, a collector of early photography, worked with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to develop the exhibition cataloged here, and a significant part of his treasure made the show possible. From "American Identities" to the "City Rises," this visual saga is organized well; we see a century of Americans moving across the land, cultivating farms, joining in town building, developing industries, and getting hooked on transportation. Many of the images are so antique that this look at U.S. history becomes a visit to another world, one in which the tools of existence are primitive but sheer will can prevail. The volume lets its content unfold, relying on themes that are broad enough to place what could otherwise be random old photographs into a story told by people who simply looked at the camera while living their lives. The vastness of America, its wild and open mid-section, and the eventual organizing of people, places, and purpose into cities are all depicted very well. Bill Clinton contributes a foreword that he uses to remind us that he became the President from Hope, AR; it might have been nice to have heard from somebody in Mohall, ND, instead. Recommended. David Bryant, New Canaan Lib., CT
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Stephen White operated the Stephen White Gallery in Los Angeles from 1975 to 1990. The images selected for "The Photograph and the American Dream" are part of his extensive private collection. White has co-curated two other museum exhibitions, "John Thomson, A Window to the Orient" and "Parallels and Contrasts".
Andreas Bluhm is the Head of Exhibitions and Display at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. He has organized and co-curated several exhibitions including "The Color of Sculpture 1840-1910" and "Light! The Industrial Age 1750-1900".