A landmark work of American photojournalism "renowned for its fusion of social conscience and artistic radicality" (New York Times)
In the summer of 1936, James Agee and Walker Evans set out on assignment for Fortune magazine to explore the daily lives of sharecroppers in the South. Their journey would prove an extraordinary collaboration and a watershed literary event when Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was first published in 1941 to enormous critical acclaim. This unsparing record of place, of the people who shaped the land, and the rhythm of their lives is intensely moving and unrelentingly honest, and todayâ??recognized by the New York Public Library as one of the most influential books of the twentieth centuryâ??it stands as a poetic tract of its time.
With a sixty-four-page photographic prologue featuring archival reproductions of Evans's classic images, this book offers listeners a window into a remarkable slice of American history… (plus d'informations)
DromJohn: I just attended a John T. Edge lecture where he read his Oxford American article "LET US NOW PRAISE FABULOUS COOKS: From the Florida swamps, a cookbook that turned a slur into a badge of honor" which compared the two as two loving but shocking books about southern culture that reached gift book status which then soften the social commentary. The photographs in White Trash Cooking by William Christenberry may be as important as those by Walker Evans in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men..… (plus d'informations)
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais.Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou mayst shake the superflux to them, And show the heavens more just.
Workers of the world, unite and fight. You have nothing to lose but your chains, and a world to win.
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais.Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
To those of whom the record is made. In gratefulness and in love. J.A. W.E.
Premiers mots
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais.Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
The house and all that was in it had now descended deep beneath the gradual spiral it had sunk through; it lay formal under the order of entire silence.
Citations
Derniers mots
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais.Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
Our talk drained rather quickly off into silence and we lay thinking, analyzing, remembering, in the human and artist's sense praying, chiefly over matters of the present and of that immediate past which was a part of the present; and each of these matters had in that time the extreme clearness, and edge, and honor, which I shall now try to give you; until at length we too fell asleep.
A landmark work of American photojournalism "renowned for its fusion of social conscience and artistic radicality" (New York Times)
In the summer of 1936, James Agee and Walker Evans set out on assignment for Fortune magazine to explore the daily lives of sharecroppers in the South. Their journey would prove an extraordinary collaboration and a watershed literary event when Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was first published in 1941 to enormous critical acclaim. This unsparing record of place, of the people who shaped the land, and the rhythm of their lives is intensely moving and unrelentingly honest, and todayâ??recognized by the New York Public Library as one of the most influential books of the twentieth centuryâ??it stands as a poetic tract of its time.
With a sixty-four-page photographic prologue featuring archival reproductions of Evans's classic images, this book offers listeners a window into a remarkable slice of American history
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10/02/2014 ... James Agee, après avoir fait ses études à Harvard, a été chargé par le groupe de presse "Time-Life" d'un reportage de six semaines sur les Blancs pauvres de l'Alabama.
Accompagné de Walker Evans – qui deviendra le plus célèbre photographe américain –, ils vont au sein de trois familles tenter d'approcher la vérité. Mais qu'est-ce que la vérité d'un homme, d'une société ? N'est-elle pas insaisissable ? Agee nous le fait percevoir. L'intention première est donc un compte rendu. Mais la personnalité fiévreuse de l'auteur va tirer de la vie la plus humble son expression la plus haute.
C'est une protestation contre la réalité, une déchirure, une brûlure intérieure qui inspirent ces portraits dont la tonalité, des plus singulières, bouscule la tradition sociologique. Comment cette pauvreté sans retour et ces détresses intérieures sont-elles possibles ?