Archibald Mac Leish / Dorothea Lange / Walker Evans / Margaret Bourke-White - Land of the Free - 1938

In this important 1930s documentary photobook, the writer and poet Archibald MacLeish uses words and photographs to produce a "sound track" in the form of a poem to accompany thought provoking pictures of America during the Depression made by important Farm Security Agency photographers.

As Mac Leish states: "Land of the Free is the opposite of a book of poems illustrated by photographs. It is a book of photographs illustrated by a poem. The photographs, most of which were taken for the Resettlement Administration [former name of the FSA] existed before the poem was written. The book is the result of an attempt to give these photographs an accompaniment of words. In so far as the form of the book is unusual, it is a form imposed by the difficulties of that attempt. The original purpose had been to write some sort of text to which these photographs might serve as commentary. But so great was the power and the stubborn inward livingness of these vivid American documents that the result was a reversal of that plan."

"Described "as 'a book of photographs illustrated by a poem', it has been seen by some commentators as liberal agitprop, tending towards the subversive and the unpatriotic. William Stott, for example, talks of its 'militant tone', though he admits that it was perhaps appropriate at the time. Others, however, see the book less in political terms, and more as a fusion of art with documentary to make a heartfelt but measured declaration about the condition of the United States during the Great Depression" (Parr & Badger).

This book is a veritable who's who of the Farm Security Agency photographers and includes images by Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Margaret Bourke-White, Ben Shahn, Arthur Rothstein, Russell Lee, Carl Mydans and several others.

Included in Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photobook, Vol. 1, page 180

Condition:
Very good first edition book. Binding tight. Some age spotting to a small number of photographs. Please examine listing photos carefully.