American Studies - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1576875652 ISBN 13: 9781576875650

Publisher: powerHouse Books, 2011

Synopsis

Jim Dow’s American Studies presents a vision of America at once familiar and foreign; a country constantly reinventing itself visually, both discarding and preserving elements of its past, in a relentless, unplanned process of change. In American Studies, Dow gives us unpeopled spaces, each resonating with a unique and telling history. A landscape, for Dow, is fashioned by ordinary individuals leaving their mark on their surroundings through everyday acts, unconscious of the enduring effect these changes have on our world. Our signs and billboards, barbershops, office buildings, libraries, pool halls, private clubs, courthouses, and motels—these places belong to a world made primarily by and for American men, and are naturally imbued with that identity. 

Obsessive by nature, once praised as “dumb, in the honorific sense of the word,” Dow takes photographs that depict how Americans purposefully create environments and transform their aesthetic power—spiritually, historically, and sometimes commercially. His method has evolved from an early black and white directness, deeply influenced by photography greats Harry Callahan and Walker Evans, to richly detailed color studies of American vernacular culture. In these beautifully realized images, made in every corner of the United States over nearly 40 years of American travel, Dow catalogs aspects of American culture that are seemingly commonplace yet always astonishingly unique.

Published in association with CDS Books of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.

About this title

About the Author

Jim Dow studied graphic design and photography at the Rhode Island School of Design during the 1960s. From that time forward he has been the recipient of numerous commissions, fellowships, and grants that have allowed him to travel and photograph as well as exhibit and publish extensively. His subjects include folk art, roadside architecture, signs, county courthouses, baseball parks, soccer stadiums, private clubs, barbeque joints, and taco trucks. He is fascinated by the way people leave their mark on both the rural and urban landscape and seeks to preserve this through photography.He lives in Boston and teaches at Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

Review

“Here’s some fresh inspiration for that road trip you’ve been meaning to take.”                        
The New Yorker, Photo Booth

About this edition

• Publisher: powerHouse Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1576875652
• ISBN 13: 9781576875650
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 136